


Pacific Wars: The Rift Awakens

by ErikaWilliams



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Bisexual Male Character, Crossover, Demisexual Male Character, Drinking, Gen, Gun Violence, I learned to slow burn from Hannibal, Loss of Limbs, M/M, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Platonic Hand Holding, Service Bird BB-8, Slow Burn, The Drift (Pacific Rim), The First Order, To Be Continued, acts of terrorism, mentions of torture
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-04-02
Updated: 2018-03-17
Packaged: 2018-05-30 19:47:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 16
Words: 59,911
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6437884
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ErikaWilliams/pseuds/ErikaWilliams
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's been eighty years since the First Contact War.  The Rift is quiet, only sending out the occasional small Kaiju to remind them that the war continues.  Humanity needs all their best pilots getting ready for the fight.</p><p>Finnick is at the top of his class at the Ranger Academy.  A new Jaegar is waiting for him.  Except he doesn't have a copilot, and months of testing have found zero results.  Poe Dameron, former pilot of Black One, is his last chance of finding a copilot.  If they don't drift, he doesn't fight.</p><p>But there are other enemies beside the Kaiju, and there are some wounds that are hard to forget.  There are rumors of people who can pilot a Jaegar alone, who don't need a copilot.  As activity begins to emerge from the Rift, Earth will need every Jaegar operational.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Drift Testing

Top of his class at Ranger Academy. Top marks in weapons, tactics, and kaiju biology. Next in line in the North American program to be given a Jaegar. She was waiting for him, an elegant piece of machinery to rival those used in the First Contact War. He had everything most people who entered the ranger program could only dream of. The other hopefuls had sensed it from the beginning. They had witnessed the high expectations placed on him by Captain Phasma. They had known what it had meant, and stayed away from him. Finnick trained with them, tested with them, but he ate in the mess alone and during recreation hours, he read the newspapers or the history books about the First Contact War. The only one who had given him the time of day had been his roommate, and even they had been incompatible.

From the outside, it seemed he had everything any ranger cadet would want. Except for the most important thing. He didn’t have a copilot. He had always assumed he would find one eventually, or they would find one for him, most likely from another Academy. Maybe the European division. After brain scans and extensive psychological profiling, they brought them in, hopeful ranger candidates from all over the world. One by one, he had proven them all to be incompatible. He wouldn’t be the first one it had happened to. A ranger cadet full to bursting with potential who failed to be drift compatible with anyone, or at least any one enrolled in the academy.

He stopped outside the door to the kwoon and took a steadying breath. The man he would be testing with today was his last chance. If they were not drift compatible, they would give the Jaegar to the next highest ranked cadet. He would be pushed to a desk job somewhere. He was already at a disadvantage.

When he stepped into the kwoon, the man in question was speaking with General Organa. The General rarely oversaw drift testing, but she was the one who had pulled the strings to get the man there. He didn’t know what the General had promised him, but it had to have been something good. Something better than the possibility of piloting a Jaegar.

Poe Dameron had already piloted a Jaegar, had already made a name for himself during the war. A few years ago, he had retired after Rift activity had slowed, and his copilot, a Temmin Wexley, had started copiloting a new Jaegar with one Jessika Pava.

Captain Phasma came to stand beside him. “You don’t need to test with him,” she informed him. “There will be other recruits.” His back stiffened as he wondered if he would still be young enough to fight by the time they finally found someone he was drift compatible with. “Every one knows he retired because he could no longer handle the drift.”

“That’s not the official report,” he responded back in the man’s defense. Ever since word had come down that they were to be testing together, his curiosity had gotten the better of him and he did a little research. He had ten kills, rivaling those of the greatest heroes of the First Contact War. Then one day he had just turned in his resignation. Never got in a Jaegar again. Not that he had really been needed. Every so often, activity from the Rift would lull to almost a standstill, almost as if the kaiju were reforming their attack strategy. The few kaiju that had wandered through in the last few years had been easily dispatched, and generally small. As if they were only being sent through to remind Earth that they were still out there, that they would be coming back in force. If the scientists were correct, they should start to see more activity within the next few months.

“If you do attempt a neural handshake, see if you can find out what compelled him to turn his back on the world.”

“Take your positions, gentlemen,” the General said, nodding in his direction. As she moved to take her spot at the side of the ring next to a man with a clipboard, Poe Dameron stepped onto the mat, picking a stick off the rack along the way. Captain Phasma, having trained him for years, handed him his own weapon before moving off to the General’s side. A few of the other hopeful cadets had shown up, probably waiting for him to fail again. The next in line to get a Jaegar was there, standing close to the edge of the mat. Waiting to take his spot in the Jaegar. He already had a good guess who his copilot would be.

Finnick rolled his neck. He couldn’t think about them; he had to focus all his attention on the man across the mat from him. His entire world narrowed down to Poe Dameron. The ex-pilot was around the same height as him, maybe just a slightly smaller build. Not that physical size or similarities had ever been a good indicator of drift compatibility. The man could be six foot eight and they would have had the same odds.

One of them had to do something soon. They couldn’t just stand there and stare at each other all day. No matter what the outcome of the test was going to be, someone had to make the first move. General Organa politely cleared her throat, and the cadet waiting to take his place was probably revving up to start cheering. That would suit a good deal of his fellow cadets if he failed.

He lunged forward, aiming to clip his opponent on the shoulder. Poe blocked his attack, but he had been expecting that and already had a follow up attack planned. The former pilot blocked that one as well and expertly brought the blunt tip of his staff under his chin.

“Zero, one,” Captain Phasma announced with just a hint of disdain in her voice. She was expecting better from him. He was expecting better from himself, he reflected as the two of them stalked back to their own sides of the mat. He readied his staff. Next time he would not let the man take him by surprise. Poe countered four of his strikes before Finnick managed to land a killing blow, staff stopping less than an inch from the man’s side.

“One, one,” General Organa said with a touch of pride in her voice. She was the one who had concocted their match-up. Phasma rolled her eyes and looked away. She should be glad he was doing so well. He might actually get his assignment.

“Hey, what’s your name?” Poe asked him as their staffs connected again.

He barely dignified the question with an answering grunt. It was probably some sort of trick. He needed all his concentration to counter Poe’s strikes while trying to find a way through his defenses.

“It’s just not fair since you know my name, and all I got was a serial number. FN-2187 or something like that.”

He tried to block out the sound of the other man’s voice, to focus on the clacking o their weapons. If a spot sounded different, it was probably weak.

“Look, I need to call you something. I’m gonna call you Finn, is that alright?”

Something must have short circuited in his brain, some insistence that the man must have been lying. He must have seen his file at some point. The next thing he knew, he was lying on his back, with the end of Poe’s staff in his face.

“One, two,” General Organa said before pursing her lips in a thin, tight line.

The edge of the staff was quickly replaced by the man’s hand. He accepted it and was pulled to his feet.

They met each other again in the center of the mat, Finnick determined not to let the man get under his skin again. No matter what the man said, he wasn’t going to listen to a word of it. He couldn’t afford to. Not only would he not get his appointment, he didn’t even want to contemplate what additional punishment Phasma would come up with.

Thrust, block, parry. He lost count of how many times they had gone through that dance. Every move Poe attempted, he countered, and all his attacks were similarly blocked. Dimly he was aware of the significance of the harmony resonating from their weapons, but he didn’t want to put a name to it. Didn’t want to ruin the moment by taking his consciousness away from their performance. Poe had to have sensed it too; he had done this dance before.

Which was why Finnick was appalled and shocked when his staff connected with Poe’s unprotected leg. He had never hurt any one before, not even when he was a novice. He would never actually hit someone. He dropped the offending weapon to the mat. Especially not someone he was even remotely drift compatible with.

“I’ve seen enough,” Captain Phasma said with disdain. Enough to get him kicked out of the Ranger program permanently. No one would want to test with him if word of this got out, and the spectators were already murmuring amongst themselves. He wouldn’t even forgive himself if he had hurt another pilot.

“So have I,” General Organa announced with a weariness in her voice he had never heard before. The war had taken its toll on her and promising rangers who couldn’t control a staff had clearly touched on a frayed nerve. “Mr. Dameron, get yourself to medical and have that leg looked at.” Thankfully, it must not have been broken since he managed to limp away unaided. “The rest of you are dismissed.” He bent down to retrieve his staff, and on impulse he picked up Poe’s as well. The last thing he would do as a ranger cadet was clean up after himself. “Not you, Finn,” she said, the corner of her lips quirking up at the name Poe Dameron had dubbed him. It made him wonder if she was the master mind behind that stunt. “I want to speak to you in my office.”

As he placed the staffs back in their slots, side by side, he wondered if he would rather be expelled by Phasma or the General. Not that he had any choice in the matter. He was probably going to be the only cadet in the history of the academy to be personally expelled by a General. At least there would be no more testing sessions in the kwoon. The hallway to the General’s office seemed interminably long and lonely. For the most part, the offices in that hall were empty, assigned to high ranking officers who rarely had time to visit let alone use an office. He wouldn’t even have someone to say goodbye to after he was officially expelled.

The door was open when he arrived, and through the frame he could see the General sitting at her desk. He only hesitated a moment before he knocked on the open door.

“Please come in, Finnick,” she said with a wan smile. “Unless you would prefer for me to call you Finn?”

“Finn’s fine,” he said nervously as he stepped in front of her desk. He tried to dry the palms of his hands on the front of his pants. “Ma’am, before you expel me, I think you should know it was an accident.”

“Expel you?” She raised an eyebrow as she stared up at him. “Why would I expel you?”

“Because I not only injured someone in the kwoon, I injured a former ranger.”

“You think that was your fault?”

He nodded, trying not to break down in front of her.

She stood and walked around the desk to stand in front of him, placing her hands on his arms. “Finnick, you did nothing wrong. He stepped into it. I saw it, Phasma saw it. You’re not going to get in trouble for him being an idiot.”

“Why would he do something like that?” He was used to the other cadets wanting nothing to do with him. He could even imagine a few of them doing something like that just to get out of testing with him. But he had just met Poe Dameron. Hell, he hadn’t even technically met him. They hadn’t exchanged more than a few words. They would not have given Poe any information about him, nothing that could skew an already desperate test. Perhaps there was something about him that just automatically pushed other people away, even people who didn’t know him.

“Because he must have felt what you felt.” She let her hands drop from his arms. “That the two of you are drift compatible.” She turned and retreated to the far side of the desk to sink back into her chair.

“But he came all this way to be tested with me.” No sane man would travel all the way there just to throw it all away in the last possible moment. Some part of him had to have wanted to be there.

“Poe Dameron finds it hard to resist a challenge.”

So it had been a challenge, a game with his future on the line. For a brief moment, his future had seemed so bright, and it had been ripped away from him by an ex-pilot who thought his future was some type of game, a bet to see if he could be compatible with a reject like him. “I know it must deflate your opinion of the man, but if you’re going to drift together, any hero worship should be dispelled early.”

“With all due respect, General, I don’t see use drifting together if he continues to run away. Captain Phasma-”

“Captain Phasma knows nothing about what that man has been through and neither do you.” He never heard the General speak so sternly before and it stunned him into silence. It was like being at one of Captain Phasma’s lectures. “Before you completely dismiss him, you should speak with him. At least see how his leg is doing. It’s what an honorable soldier would do.”

“Yes, Ma’am.” Even if she had not given him the honorable soldier line, he still would have gone to medical. He had questions that demanded answers, like why Poe thought himself important enough to toy with a man’s future like that. It may have just been a game to the other man, but it was everything for him.

“You are dismissed, Finnick.” Lost in his own thoughts, he nodded dimly as he turned on his heel. “Oh, and Finnick?” she called after him. “We never told him your name.”

He knew he wouldn’t have long. He hadn’t broken Dameron’s leg, and he would probably want to leave at his earliest convenience. He might not even gone to medical. He might have split as soon as he had left the kwoon. 

Even if it turned out to be a wasted trip, Finnick didn’t have anywhere else he had to be. He could go sit alone in his room, doomed to an eternity of testing. Or he could confront Poe, ask him what it was about him that drove him away immediately. His pace to medical was brisk, but not hurried.

He stopped outside the door and peered around the corner. The nurse on staff was sitting at a desk, filling out some paperwork. Medical could hold five patients at a time on a bad day, but Poe was currently the only one there. He watched him for a few moments, wondering if he could get any more insight to the man. He looked tired, his eyes heavy lidded, but that could have been caused by any number of painkillers they may have given him. His injured leg was propped on the bed, and his other foot rested lightly on the floor. Like he would have been running somewhere if his other leg would permit it. Perhaps he had hit him much harder than he had thought. Not broken, but injured enough to keep him hobbled. At least he couldn’t go running off anywhere before they at least had the chance to talk. He deserved an explanation if nothing else.

The man gave a little start as he walked into the room, a jump that suggested he was guilty of something. “Hey, buddy,” the man said from his cot, giving him a too wide grin.

“How’s the leg?” he asked as he pulled a chair over and sank down into it. It seemed as good an opener as anything else, and it was technically his excuse for being there.

“Don’t worry about it,” the retried pilot said, as if it had been no one’s fault all along. Like he hadn’t ruined everything. “They gave me an X-Ray to be safe, but the nurse says it’s probably just bruised.”

“So I guess you’ll be on the first helicopter back to Guatemala,” he said with a little more bite than he intended. Still, he was surprised the man was there. He wouldn’t have put it past the man to leave even if he had a broken leg.

“Hey, that’s not-”

“The General told me you stepped into my attack,” he said, and Dameron gave up all attempts at protest. He would never argue with the General had said, even if it wasn’t true. “You were my last chance to pilot a Jaegar. I deserve to know why you did it.”

“Sorry, buddy, but there’s not much I can do if we’re not compatible.”

If Dameron was going to continue to live in denial, there was little he could do to change his mind. The man had experience drifting, he had to have felt it and deliberately took steps to avoid copiloting with him. Was it him specifically, or was Captain Phasma onto something in her assessment of the man? Either way, General Organa believed he could get through to Dameron. Something only he could do that would prove they were drift compatible beyond a shadow of a doubt.

“You really believe that, don’t you?” Someone he had convinced himself, to absolve him of any guilt he might otherwise have felt.

“Buddy, they told me you were the top of your class. We would have synced better if we were meant to pilot together.”

Then it hit him, the one thing he could say that they had even the slightest chance of convincing Dameron they were compatible. Their neural handshake had the potential to be one of the strongest recorded in recent history. If he could convince Poe Dameron to drift with him.

“When you were in the kwoon, you called me Finn.” It was the moment he had lost his concentration because it had been so unexpected.

“I needed something to call you.” He shrugged and glanced at his bruised leg. “It was just something I came up with based on the serial number they gave me.”

“Poe,” he started, leaning in towards the other man in earnest. “My name is Finnick.” The man flinched like he had been hit again. “Are you going to try to tell me that was nothing more than coincidence?”

He stood up to leave. Let he man stew on that for a while. It likely wouldn’t change his mind, and he didn’t think he would be able to look at him for much longer. Besides, he had some packing to do. He couldn’t stand staying at the academy til he came back on the roster for another Jaegar. Nor could he watch another cadet take it from him. He left Poe Dameron sitting on the cot, staring down at his bruised leg with a pensive expression. 

It didn’t take long for him to pack up his few belongings. Being a Ranger cadet and in the middle of a war, even with the Kaiju currently on a rest, he really didn’t have a lot of things to collect. A couple changes of clothes, a few history books he found really interesting and some helpful tactical manuals. His roommate was gone at the moment, probably still enjoying the time he had left at the academy. Maybe he could serve as a cautionary tale to future cadets. It doesn’t matter how good you are if you can’t find a drift partner. Searching for that elusive copilot should be number one priority. He sat down with a sigh next to the medium sized duffel bag on the bed. He couldn’t leave anything behind, but he wasn’t taking much with him either other than memories. He should have been taking a copilot and a Jaegar.

Looking back on it, he couldn’t see anything he would have done differently. Not that he thought it would have changed anything. The other cadets had shied away from him after his first simulation. It had taken him three hours to take down the monstrosity, but he had not had a single casualty. Other cadets had faster times by higher loss of life. He supposed it all had been worth it even though he was leaving the Academy for good.

Captain Phasma entered his quarters without even the courteous knock on the door. Her eyes quickly swept the room, lingering for a moment on his bag. “I see you’ve already had the foresight to pack.”

“Yes, ma’am. I’m leaving the Ranger Academy.”

“Don’t be absurd. You’re being transferred to the San Francisco Shatterdome. Congratulations, Ranger.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's been a long time since I've written anything, so if you enjoyed what I have so far, I would really appreciate you telling me so in the comments. This idea has been with me for quite a while, after realizing that Finn and Poe were, in fact, drift compatible. I hope that I can do justice not only to the wonderful characters of Star Wars, but also to the wonderful world of Pacific Rim.
> 
> Yes, there will be more. Yes, more characters will be added. Yes, Rey is going to be in it, I didn't forget about her. No, BB-8 is not a dog. Yes, BB-8 does exist, but not as a droid.
> 
> Also, I am brand new to AO3, so if there is any advice or tips you would like to give me, I'd love to hear them!


	2. Scavengers

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Finn and Poe settle in at the San Francisco Shatterdome and meet their Jaegar.
> 
> A graveyard scavenger has been scouring the wasteland for working Jaegar tech to work on her own secret project.

The plane was waiting for him by the time he got to the airfield. Captain Phasma seemed reluctant to let him leave, giving him some last minute advice. It wasn’t that she was loathe to see him go; she was more opposed to his copilot. More than once during her lecture she had mentioned something about how he would be wasting his potential piloting a Jaegar with Poe Dameron. That the two of them would never accomplish anything together.

 

He had already managed something. Somehow he had convinced Poe to drift with him. Given that the General didn’t even seem to really know why he had retired, that was no small feat.

 

The plane he hurried to was small, just big enough for a few passengers, and the pilot waved him aboard as he approached. The General was already seated when he boarded, carefully studying a datapad. Poe was nowhere to be seen.

 

“I hope you don’t mind flying with me to San Francisco, Finnick,” General Organa said as he took a seat. He secured his duffel bag under the seat next to him. “Or would you prefer if I continued to call you Finn?”

 

“I like Finn,” he said, rubbing his palms on the seat armrests. It was nice to have a nickname after so long, and even better that there were people who were actually willing to use it. People who liked him enough to ask which name he would prefer.

 

“I’m sure Poe will be glad to hear that.”

 

The pilot boarded and closed the door behind him. “We should be cleared for take off in five minutes, General,” the pilot informed them before he disappeared into the cockpit.

 

“I’m sure you’re quite eager to get to San Francisco and see your Jaegar.” She tapped a few things into her datapad. “And to get better acquainted with your new copilot.”

 

“Where is Poe?” he asked, looking around the small cabin like the man could possibly be hiding somewhere. Not unless he was underneath the seats, or in the cockpit with the pilot. “Shouldn’t he be flying to San Francisco with us?” Who decided to let him out of their sight? After he made his decision to copilot with Finn, he should have been personally escorted to the airfield.

 

“Poe has to take a detour through Guatemala. He’ll meet you at the Shatterdome later this afternoon.”

 

“And you just let him go?” Unsupervised, Poe just might reconsider. Being home, he might remember why he had retired in the first place. They might never find him again this time. He could run away, drop off the grid. He would be back to square one, and he wouldn’t even have the Academy to fall back on. He would have to go back to his parents. Face their disappointed faces. They hadn’t approved of his decision to join the Ranger Academy in the first place. They told him they were safe on the Atlantic. That he shouldn’t needlessly put himself in harm’s way. If he piloted a Jaegar, he would be dead by the time he was twenty-five. He couldn’t go back to his family. They needed to divert this plane to Guatemala and find Poe Dameron before he could get too far. He couldn’t have had too much of a head start on them.

 

“I believe he was going to retrieve a pet,” General Organa informed him as he started to push himself to his feet, intent on telling the pilot they needed to change course. “You wouldn’t deny the man the closest friend he’s had these past few years, would you?”

 

“No,” he said, slowly lowering himself back to his seat. If that was what Poe had been going for. There was a lot he didn’t know about Poe Dameron, things he probably should have thought about before he agreed to take a trip into his mind. All he really knew was his records as a Ranger. Which were impressive, but told him nothing about the man he was going to be living with for the foreseeable future. What if he was the type to just leave his underwear lying all over the place?

 

“Look on the bright side. By getting there first, you’ll get your choice of bunk.” Small consolation prize if Poe never showed up. “Here, this might ease your mind a little.” She passed him the datapad she had been holding.

 

“What’s this?” he asked as he accepted it, careful not to drop it.

 

“Everything the PPDC has on file about Poe Dameron.” The text on the datapad did have a small picture of the ex-pilot in the top left corner and across the top in large, red letters “Out of active service.” “Obviously we’re going to need to update it once we’re sure the two of you are going to work out together.”

 

“Do you think we won’t?” he asked, scrolling idyll through the file. Nothing to suggest what type of pet Dameron was going back for. He wasn’t feeling too confident about this pet actually existing.

 

“The two of you are drift compatible, of that I’m absolutely certain. Whether or not he’ll actually drift with you is another matter.” He was listening to her, but he was also scanning the file. Maybe there was something in there that could give him some clues. “All I know is there was a Kaiju attack, and he and Wexley were supposed to go out. They were strapped into Black One, and when they tried to initiate a neural handshake, nothing happened. Ecuador barely got there in time to stop the Kaiju from breaching land.” Poe’s home, no less. He had to watch someone else come in and defend his homeland because he couldn’t connect. “Poe retired, Black One was stripped of parts and sent to the graveyard, and Wexley has a new copilot.”

 

“Jessika Pava,” he said absently. It might not be that Poe refused to drift with anyone, it was possible he had lost the ability to form a neural handshake. There would be a lot more Rangers if just anyone could do it.

“You know your Rangers,” the General said approvingly.

 

“I did some research into Ranger Dameron when I learned I was testing with him.” It wasn’t like the information had not been publicly available. “If he refused to drift with Wexley, what makes you think he’ll drift with me?”

 

“I have faith that you’ll be able to get through to him.” He wished he could have that faith in himself. He still wasn’t convinced that Poe Dameron was going to be meeting them in San Francisco. “Remember that I’ve read your files as well,” she said, indicating the datapad in his hand. He leaned back in the seat and started to read.

 

~*~*~

 

She navigated the motorbike through the skeletal pieces of metal that towered above her. They had been stripped of their usable parts, the twisted pieces of metal that remained would be unrecognizable to someone who didn’t know what they were looking at. The latest haul was strapped to her back as she sped through the wasteland. She needed to get to the appointed spot before her contact left for the day. Luckily, she knew the paths through the wasteland, and knew all the other shortcuts that other people were too afraid to travel. Places where the radiation was rumored to be too thick and dangerous. She had been living in the wasteland for most of her life, and had yet to grow a second head. And going where other people were afraid to tread had its advantages, especially when new Jaegars were dropped off.

 

She sped up as she passed through a hollow shell that had once been a leg, desperate to get to her buyer and back before the sun set. Predators roamed in the dark, and guns were not worth the price of bullets. Better to be safely inside then try to defend yourself from one of the giant cats that prowled on the machines like they were trees. She had found the body of someone who had been caught unawares, attacked from above while they tried to work. Found the body and sold everything they had left behind. It hadn’t been worth dying for. The entire stash had barely been enough to fill the tank of her motorbike. She wasn’t about to die and let someone else reap the benefits of her hard work. Not what she had hidden in the heart of the graveyard, or anything else for that matter. A squirrel chattered at her from atop a metal arm as she sped by, racing the lengthening shadows.

 

“You’re late,” her contact told her as she stopped the motorbike. She made no reply as she slung the satchel off her shoulder. He had no idea what it was like out in the graveyard. He had the luxury of being able to send other people out to look for things for him. His rigid posture suggested ex-military, which was the best excuse she could think of for his intense interest in war memorabilia. “What did you bring me?”

 

She dumped her satchel onto the ground. Mostly it was bits and pieces of technology ripped from the machines. A piece of sheet metal splattered blue. A golden locket on a broken chain with a faded picture. He looked over her offerings with a critical eye, clasping his hands behind his back. It was getting harder and harder to find suitable salvage. Less machines were being brought to the graveyard as they were constantly evolving the way they were built.

 

“I’ll give you seventy-five dollars for everything,” he announced with precision. Seventy-five dollars would barely be enough to fuel her motorbike. Luckily she had some stored fuel, but she needed to eat as well.

 

“That locket alone could easily be worth three hundred to the right buyer.”

 

“This piece of garbage?” he asked, toeing it with his boot.

 

“That piece of garbage came from inside the cockpit of a Mark One. It’s owner was one of the original Rangers during the First Contact War.”

 

“You can’t prove that any more than I can, and you’ll have a hard time explaining to the authorities how you came across such a relic without entering restricted territory.”

 

She glared at him, trying to keep her shoulders steady. He knew she lacked the means to sell the components herself, but he also lacked the fortitude to enter the wasteland. He would be hard pressed to find someone else to do it for him for his wages. She would go elsewhere if she had the means to do so without getting herself arrested.

 

“I told you before, I can get the best prices for you for working Jaegar tech. Find me something that works, and you’ll be rewarded handsomely.”

 

Working Jaegar tech was near impossible to find, and even if she did find something, she wasn’t going to sell it to him. She had bigger plans than selling junk to him for the rest of her life. “Are you unfamiliar with the concept of the graveyard?” she asked, taking a few steps closer to him, her boots crunching over the dry ground. “It’s where they send the decommissioned Jaegars, most of which were destroyed by Kaiju.”

 

“Black One would have been in one piece.”

 

“I told you, I don’t know what that is.”

 

“It was a black and red Jaegar, likely the only one to make it to the graveyard in one piece.”

 

“Haven’t seen it,” she said before backing away from him. “I want a hundred and twenty-five for what I brought you today.”

 

“One hundred, and I’ll let you keep that locket since you like it so much.”

 

“Done.” She bent down to retrieve the locket and placed it in her vest pocket. The pockets in her pants had holes in them she had not been able to fix properly.

 

“Pleasure doing business with you, as always,” he said as he handed her the money. She quickly counted it before tucking it safely behind the locket.

 

“I’ll be in touch,” she informed him as she made her way backwards to the bike. Never turn your back on someone until you were sure of your exit strategy. She started up the bike and headed back into the graveyard. Tomorrow, she would go into the city and restock her supplies. Tonight, she needed to get back to shelter before the predators came out. It was possible to fight the big cats off, if one was prepared. She had done it once, her first encounter with one of the beasts. She had managed to beat it off with a metal staff. She had had also received four parallel scars across her upper bicep for her trouble. It had taken the little money she had at the time to buy some medicine to stave off infection. Better to be safely inside before they started to prowl.

 

Her destination lay at the center of the graveyard, where few people would dare to travel. Her things were still in tact there, and would be safe for the time being. None of the jets that flew overhead seemed to notice something amiss. She brought her bike to a halt at the base of an upright Jaegar. Pulling aside a sheet on the foot, she eased the motorbike inside before resealing the hatch. The only way someone could find it was if they knew where the seam was. She adjusted her staff across her back and started to climb.

 

The Jaegar was her own secret project she had been working on for years. She knew where all the handholds were to pull herself up the leg that had been liberated from three separate Jaegars. Even if somebody managed to come that far into the graveyard, she doubted they would be able to scale the outside of the machine.

 

The red and black Jaegar, now that had been a find. Stripped of all vital components, it was still an intact shell. She had used a good portion of her savings to rent a semi and a crane to get the left arm from the drop site to her home location and safely attached to her own Jaegar. Other parts had also been used to patch up some large holes she had not yet found some viable parts for. She almost had a complete working Jaegar at her disposal. If her contact was so interested in Jaegar tech, he would be thrilled if she could deliver a working Jaegar to him. She just wasn’t sure if it was ready to run or not, and without a second pilot, she would never know.

 

She opened a hatch on the side of the dusty, gray cockpit and slid inside. She pulled the door shut behind her and placed her staff upright against the wall. Her pallet was in the corner covered with a thin blanket and a shaggy pillow. A pilot’s suit and helmet were against the far wall. A flower she had found wilting in the wasteland. Bits and pieces of Jaegar tech strewn about that she was still learning the usage of. It wasn’t much, but it was her home, and she was alone. It certainly beat living in the city, trying to get by. She wouldn’t be able to afford a place. She would have to share with three other families, and then the crying children would probably keep her up all night and she would be miserable all the time. She was better off alone, out here in the graveyard, rather than being stuck with strangers.

 

She grabbed a ration bar from her stash and made her way back outside. She climbed to the top of her Jaegar and sat down on the weathered metal, pulling her knees close to her chest. The sun shimmered red above the Pacific Ocean. Between her and the ocean, metal skeletons, relics of a war that had been going on since before she was born, reached for the sky. She sat on top of her tower, eating an old ration bar and watched the sun bleed into the Pacific.

 

~*~*~

 

Between the lack of Slip’s snoring and his discomfort about Poe’s whereabouts, Finn hadn’t slept well. He had chosen the lower bunk because it had been so easy to collapse on and pulled the blanket up to his chin while he stared at the wall. For what had felt like most of the night. Instinctively, he knew he must have gotten some sleep, or else he likely wouldn’t have been able to roll out of bed. Not that it had been easy, but he managed to wearily stand up and turn around to pull the covers straight. He was fairly sure he would have heard the other man come in, but he still checked the top bunk to make sure Poe hadn’t managed to sneak in in the middle of the night. He should have known it would be empty. There was no other belongings in the room, no dog sleeping contently in the corner. The pet thing must have been a myth.

 

He still had a little over half an hour before he was to meet with the General. She was supposed to introduce him and Dameron to their support team and the Jaegar. He quickly changed into a fresh set of clothes and pulled his shoes on. A quick tour the night before had shown him what he needed to know, and there were signs with arrows on the walls for new people like him. He and Poe were currently the only Rangers, the first two in the newly reopened San Francisco Shatterdome. As they built more Jaegars, other Rangers would join them. For now, it was just going to be the two of them, their support team, technical crew and essential staff. He actually passed more people in the hallway than he expected. The Ranger Academy was small compared to this place.

 

He made his way into the mess, looking at all the people who were already seated. He didn’t see any one he recognized, but he was used to eating alone. Besides, that could change soon enough. This wasn’t the Academy, no one here was going to begrudge him for being good at what he did. In fact, people here might actually like him better for it. He grabbed a tray and loaded food onto it without paying much attention to what he was grabbing. He made his way to an empty table and sat down. This would likely be the last meal he ate alone. Not only was he determined to make friends, but there was Poe to contend with as well.

 

There were mandatory classes about what it was like to drift with someone, all with the disclaimer that nothing could prepare them for the real experience. All the classes agreed that a copilot was a companion for life. That once you drifted with someone, you wouldn’t want to be separated from them. Must have been hard for Wexley, to watch his copilot walk away. It was probably why he had found a new copilot so quickly. She couldn’t replace Poe, but it was possible she could fill the void he would have left. He didn’t want to know what it said about Poe that he had been able to walk away. Or if that was any indication that he would be able to walk away again. He finished off his breakfast and made his way to the hangar where he was to meet with the General.

 

Poe had beat him there and was already talking very passionately to General Organa about something. “They took BB-8 from me,” Poe was saying as Finn approached them. “As soon as the plane landed, they took my bags and BB-8.”

 

“I’m sure they’ll take good care of him. No doubt you didn’t want to be carrying him around the Shatterdome all day. He’ll be much happier staying in one spot and getting used to his new home.”

 

“It’s just he’s not really comfortable around strangers.” So the pet had been real after all. A dog or a cat most likely. His parents always told him pets were a valuable waste of resources.

 

Poe caught sight of him first as he approached. “Buddy!” he said, maybe just a little too loudly to be convincing. Except when he got close enough, Poe pulled him in for a tight hug. “It’s good to see you again,” Poe said in his ear.

 

Unsure of what was going on, he returned the hug. “Good to see you too, Poe.” Poe seemed to have no intention of letting him go within an acceptable amount of time. “Poe, what are you doing?” he asked quietly enough that General Organa wouldn’t be able to hear.

 

“Just saying hi to my new buddy, Finnick,” he said as he pulled away, patting Finn once on the chest for effect.

 

“Actually, I prefer Finn,” he said which earned him a smirk from the General and an odd look from Poe.

 

“If the two of you are done with your reunion, there’s a Jaegar and a support team waiting for you.”

 

“Of course, General,” Finn said as she turned and led the way.

 

“So what are we going to call it?” Poe asked as the two of them walked side by side behind the General.

 

“Shouldn’t we wait until we see it?” They could end up naming it something completely inappropriate. He didn’t want to be the laughing stock of the Ranger world because Poe talked him into a stupid name.

 

“Where’s the fun in that?” Poe countered. He was not going to let Poe talk him into something just because he was experienced. “I’m thinking Stormpilot,” he said, nonchalantly.

 

“Poe?”

 

“You know, piloting the storm of the Kaiju war.”

 

“Poe, that’s a stupid name.”

 

“Gentlemen, the Jaegar already has a name,” General Organa told them as they turned into the correct hangar bay. And there it was, towering above them, still shiny from assembly, twenty-five thousand tons of power. Forgetting every thing else for a moment, he went running to the railing to get a closer look. His Jaegar. Everything from the last eight years had been leading up to this moment. Somehow it made everything else seem worth it.

 

It was a Mark Twenty-Four like Black One had been, all sleek lines designed for speed. Most of the time he would be on the inside, looking out at the world, and that prebattle shine wouldn’t last forever. He hadn’t even noticed Poe had come to stand beside him, placing his hand next to his on the railing. Their Jaegar. That they would be piloting together. He could forgive him for disappearing for a little in light of the future they were going to share.

 

“Gentlemen, let me introduce you to Renegade Nova.”

 

They spent the rest of they day meeting various members of the support team, people who would be watching his and Poe’s backs while they were in their Jaegar. There were so many names to remember, he thought he was going to be lucky to remember any of their faces. They all wore name tags though, so that should help avoid any awkward situations. At least in the time it took to get to know them better. Maybe at lunch or rec hours he could talk to some of them individually.

 

They went to lunch and then it was several more hours after that before the General decided they had enough and released them to their quarters. “The two of you should relax and get to know each other better. Tomorrow, you’ll start your training.”

 

“So, which way to our room, buddy?” Poe asked him once the General had left them alone. Poe hadn’t even been given the chance to change out of the clothes he had been wearing yesterday.

 

“It’s this way,” Finn told him, indicating the direction with his head. They set off at a leisurely pace in silence. He was running through all the people he had met, trying to see if he could match up any of the faces with names. He didn’t think he was having much success, and the General had told them to get to know each other better. “About that pet?” he asked since he didn’t want to talk work with the man, and he didn’t know much else about him..

 

“BB-8? You’re going to love him.” If nothing else, Poe’s grin proved the pet did mean a lot to him.

 

“So what kind of animal is it? A dog? A cat?” Hopefully something low maintenance that wasn’t going to keep him up at night. He preferred sleep when he could get it.

 

“You’ll see,” Poe responded vaguely. It slightly unnerved him that Poe was being so secretive about the species of his pet. For all he knew, it could be a tarantula, or a snake. “When did you join the Ranger Academy?

 

“When I was fifteen.” He had known his whole life that was what he wanted to do.

 

“That young?” The Ranger Academy didn’t accept people any younger, or else he would have joined much sooner. Of course, no one was actually allowed in a Jaegar until they were eighteen.

 

“I always knew I wanted to be Ranger. I wanted to help protect people.” If Poe was asking him about work, maybe he could ask a few questions of his own. “When did you decided to be a Ranger?”

 

“My parents were both Rangers. It was only a matter of time before it got around to me as well.” Maybe he could do some research and see what the records were on Poe’s parents. It might tell him more about the man at his side.

 

“This is our room,” he said, indicating the doorway on their right and allowing Poe to precede him. There was some sort of cage in the darkened corner, and Poe’s bags had been deposited in the middle of the floor. “I took the bottom bunk,” he said, because there was no way he was going to give that up. Maybe Poe should have brought his pet up with him when he had come up for drift testing. Obviously he had not thought they were going to be compatible.

 

With a grin, Poe immediately went to the cage and reached his hand inside. That cage was a little small for a dog. “And this is BB-8,” Poe said as he pulled his hand back out. A large orange and white bird, possibly some type of cockatoo, was perched on his forearm. “BB-8, this is Finn.” He might have been crazy, but he thought that bird looked directly at him.

 

“Poe, that’s a bird,” he said although Poe clearly already knew that. He just, never really considered a bird to be a pet.

 

“BB-8’s not just a bird,” Poe said, pulling his arm closer to his body defensively. “He’s extremely rare, possibly the last of his kind.”

 

The bird made a noise that sounded like they might have been words. Poe looked scandalized and extended his arm back out.

 

“And I’m guessing it speaks.”

 

“Do you know Spanish?”

 

“No.” Which was probably what the bird had been chattering away in.

 

“Good,” Poe said. BB-8 left his arm and went to perch on the bed rail. “He doesn’t say anything interesting anyway.”

 


	3. Renegade Nova

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Finn and Poe have received their Jaegar, a Mark Twenty-Four coded "Renegade Nova." Before they can drift together, however, they'll undergo extensive training to make sure they will be able to work together.

First day of training and they were already off to a bad start. He had gotten up on time: years of rigorous training at the Academy had insured he followed a strict schedule. The problem had been Poe, who had somehow managed to sleep through two alarms, and Finn’s verbal insistence that it was time to get out of bed. He did manage to wake BB-8, however, and the bird screamed in protest. Which Poe still somehow managed to sleep through. Ten minutes later, BB-8 finally settled down, and Finn was no closer to getting Poe out of the top bunk than he had been when he had first rolled out of bed.

 

He finally managed to wake Poe by grabbing him and pulling him towards the edge of the bed. He would carry him there over his shoulder if he had to, but they were going to go to their first day of Ranger training together. He had almost pulled Poe entirely off the bed when Poe finally decided to open his eyes.

 

“No need to get rough with me, buddy,” Poe said as he extracted his shirt from Finn’s grip.

 

“We’re supposed to report to training in two minutes.” Even if they ran, and he wasn’t entirely sure when was the last time Poe had even thought about running, he was doubtful they would make it there on time. Tomorrow, he was going to have to set his alarm for even earlier.

 

“We have to swing by the mess first, BB-8 needs something to eat.”

 

“If you wanted to feed the bird, you shouldn’t have slept through both your alarms.”

 

“You’re not going to let the poor bird starve, are you?”

 

In the end, he relented, just like Poe had known he would, frustratingly enough. But only because that bird had started screaming, and he did not want it to follow them all day making that sort of noise. Since they were there anyway, he grabbed a small plate for himself. No telling how long they were going to be kept in training. Poe took BB-8 with them to the mess and fed the bird some fruit he had broken up.

 

“So we’re just going to take that bird with us all day?” he asked once they had all gotten breakfast and BB-8 had climbed back onto Poe’s shoulder.

 

He can’t stay alone,” Poe protested. So that was a yes. He almost asked if BB-8 was going to be coming into the cockpit with them, but decided it wasn’t a good time.

 

They ended up being thirty-five minutes late for their first training session. Their instructor, whose name had only been given to him as Nora, was a retired Ranger who had to be at least nearing her seventies. She held a thin staff in her hands and did nothing to hid the disdain in her eyes as she stared down at them. Stared down, even though she was shorter than both of them. Finn stood next to Poe with his hands clasped behind his back, trying not to stare at her eyes, trying to stare at the wall behind her instead. The silence was getting unbearable, and he might say something stupid soon. She just need to start yelling at them or something.

 

“So, who talks first?” Poe asked from beside him. “Do you want to start by yelling at us or do you want us to start by apologizing?” He was going to get both of them killed. They were already going to be in enough trouble for being so late. Finn wouldn’t be surprised if they were kicked out of the program and Renegade Nova was going to be handed off to someone else. Someone with more respect.

 

“I suppose it’s a good sign that the two of you were late together.” She started pacing in front of them, looking them up and down and appraising them. How much could she really tell just from looking at them? “We have much work to do if you are going to drift together,” she started as she continued her trek in front of them. “I’ve read your files. Theoretically, it should work.” And they had passed the initial drift testing together. “But we have much to overcome. You don’t know each other. You have vastly different backgrounds. And Poe has failed to drift before.”

 

Poe bristled beside him and BB-8 flew off his shoulder to go perch on a shelf on the opposite wall.

 

“I think the two of us will be able to overcome those obstacles,” he said confidently. Hell, he had managed to get Poe to come to the San Francisco Shatterdome with him. The rest of it should be easy from there. Besides, there had been some sort of connection between them, one that Poe had obviously been unable to ignore.

 

“With all due respect, Ma’am,” Poe spoke up from beside him, “I’ve already been through Ranger training before.” With Ranger Wexley, who he must have inherently thought was a better drift partner. He couldn’t go back to him if he wanted. “I think I should be able to sit out these next twelve weeks of training.”

 

Their trainer moved so fast, Finn wasn’t when she had moved. She whacked Poe solidly on the thigh, and he could see him clench his jaw against the pain. He almost felt concerned since that was the leg he had hit the other day, but Poe had really brought it upon himself. He shouldn’t have been mouthing off like that, especially since he was implying that he didn’t want to work with him.

 

The same staff cracked on his leg, and he barely kept his own gasp in. “I didn’t say anything,” he protested, glaring at Poe who was surely somehow responsible for this.

 

“In the Jaegar, you will share his pain,” she scolded as she stepped backwards from them, never breaking eye contact. “You will experience his joy, his fear, perhaps even his death.”

 

He tried not to think about that part too much, but most Jaegar pilots did die together. Inside the Jaegar, fighting against the Kaiju. Very few of them actually lived to retirement age. It was a well known fact that there were very few pilots between the ages of thirty and sixty.

 

“If you are uncomfortable with that, perhaps you are the one who should rethink your decision to be a Ranger.”

 

He would never do that; he had worked far too hard to give up now. And Poe was his copilot, for reasons that might not be immediately clear to him. The two of them were meant to pilot a Jaegar together.

 

“Never, Ranger Nora,” he said, straightening himself back up despite the pain. She had really hit them hard. “Ranger Dameron is my copilot.”

 

She gave him a sort of half-smile, but it didn’t last very long. “Then the two of you should get to work. Now both of you give me twenty-five pushups.”

 

He didn’t look over at Poe as he got himself into position. He finished five pushups before the stick came back across his left shoulder, followed immediately by a crack to his right as she smacked Poe as well.

 

“You two are out of synch!” She was very liberal with her punishments. She expected them to be in perfect synch when they had never drifted together. Poe had been out of the game for years, and there was no telling what he had done when he no longer worried about piloting a Jaegar. It had likely not been keeping in fighting shape to take on the Kaiju. He couldn’t expect Poe to keep up with him on his own. He would have to watch him if he needed to slow down and match his pace.

 

“Would the two of you like to try that again?” Nora asked, folding her arms behind her back.

 

They did try again. And again. And again. They never managed to get to twenty-five. She always found something wrong with them. They were going too slow. Finn’s form was wrong. Poe wasn’t trying hard enough. Each time she corrected them with a sharp smack. Even his bruises were starting to get bruises. After a while, she switched to other exercises. The plank rolls ended with him rolling into Poe on more than one occasion. She didn’t correct them that time, probably because the rough tumbles into each other were punishment enough. They jarred his bruises in ways that made him want to sit inside a sauna and never crawl out of it.

 

They were dismissed for lunch, and BB-8 came with them, perched carefully on Poe’s shoulder. Finn picked at his food, too sore to eat anything, too tired to talk to Poe. Not that he would know what to say. Poe didn’t really eat much either, though he did break off some food to give to BB-8. The bird seemed to relish the meal. BB-8 came dangerously close to pecking at Poe’s hand on more than one occasion. Poe didn’t seem to mind, or even notice.

 

After lunch they were going to have more training, more meetings, and he knew he wasn’t going to have any trouble sleeping that night. Or for the next twelve weeks for that matter. They spent so much time in training, by the time they were released for the evening, he wanted to crawl straight into bed until it was time to report back in the morning. The Ranger Academy had done nothing to prepare him for this amount. Except now he was no longer solely responsible for making sure everything was done and done correctly. Now he had to do all of it with Poe.

 

After a week, General Organa called them for a debriefing with Nora in the Hangar. They stood underneath Renegade Nova, the Jaegar towering above them, a maintenance worker polishing the black steel of the right arm.

 

“How are Renegade Nova’s pilots progressing?” she asked Nora.

 

“Better than I expected,” she said with a touch of what Finn thought was pride. It might have swelled his head a little if he wasn’t still so exhausted from training and BB-8 acting out in the middle of the night. Poe somehow managed to sleep through it all. “Poe is not quite at Finn’s physical abilities yet, but they two of them have been working well together.”

 

Working well together. General Organa folded her arms across her chest and turned around to look up at Renegade Nova. He wasn’t sure if that was the phrase he would use. They still got hit with the staff on occasion, but it was far less than it had been on the first day. They still had the odd tumble into each other, but those hurt less, almost like he was getting used to rolling into Poe. He supposed it couldn’t be much different from tumbling into his mind. Provided, of course, that Poe was amiable to the idea by the time they got around to drifting. Soon enough, they would be inside the cockpit of their Jaegar, and all this training would be nothing but a distant memory.

 

General Organa turned back around to face them. “The Rift will not stay quiet for much longer.” Which meant they would be fighting together sooner than any one thought. “I need the two of them ready and doing test runs as soon as possible.

 

“Yes, General. I could cut their training down to ten weeks,” Nora said. Ten weeks, and he would officially be a Ranger. It was earlier than he had expected.

 

“See if you can make it eight,” General Organa informed them. “As the frontline pilots of the San Francisco Shatterdome, I want them ready when the first Kaiju attacks. I want the world to know that we are ready to defend them. Are there any questions?”

 

“Yeah, why are we flying a Mark Twenty-Four?” Poe asked, indicating Renegade Nova with an upturned palm. Finn had wondered that himself, since they usually gave new Rangers the latest technology to keep them one step ahead of the Kaiju. “Is it because of me? I’ll have you know I can pilot anything from a Mark One to a Mark Twenty-Five.”

 

“Do not be disrespectful,” Nora snapped at Poe. “You will never pilot a Mark Five, and you would be wise to remember that.” There had only been one Mark Five, and there was nothing left of it. There wasn’t even a skeleton left in the graveyard that someone could bring back into service.

 

“Wouldn’t a Mark Twenty-Five be more effective against the Kaiju?” Wasn’t that the point of upgrading the models, to evolve as much as the Kaiju were? Wouldn’t they die that much faster in an older model? Besides, if he was seen agreeing with Poe, the General might see just how well they worked together. He just happened to actually agree with him on this point.

 

“Maybe if we had upgraded to a Mark Twenty-Six, we would have been able to give you one of those.”

 

“What happened to the Mark Twenty-Five?” Finn asked.

 

The General sighed and lowered her arms. “The Mark Twenty-Five was technically superior, yes,” she admitted. “Unfortunately, there was a fatal internal flaw, one that the cultists have exploited.” He hadn’t much experience with the cultists, but he could see Poe stiffen beside him, his spine straightening and the slight widening of his eyes. “So, for your safety, we have placed you with a Mark Twenty-Four that has not been exploited. Are there any more questions?”

 

“No, General,” they both said together, a little bit out of sync.

 

“Good. Then I’ll expect to hear an even more promising report next week.”

 

~*~*~

 

The next week was more training, with Nora overseeing their physical instruction in the morning. After lunch, however, was technical training, a hands on approach to teach him everything they could about the Jaegar he could be piloting without actually putting him in the cockpit. Poe still had to attend classes with him, even though he wouldn’t actually be learning anything new. The technical training covered everything from basic operations to minor repairs should something go wrong. Most of the time Poe stayed out of his way, sitting on a bench at the side of the room and watching him work.

 

BB-8 also followed them to their lessons, much to Finn’s annoyance. At first he thought the instructor would throw the bird out for fear it would shit on all the technical equipment. Yet not only had the instructor allowed the bird in the room with them, he had brought him treats on more than one occasion. Sinjir was his name, and he had been servicing Jaegars for longer than his and Poe’s combined life spans.

 

Poe was watching him with one foot on the bench and his arm folded across it. BB-8 was perched on his shoulder. The bird was running its beak through Poe’s mass of curls while chattering away, incoherently. Poe said the bird spoke, but none of the sounds ever made any sense to him. Sometimes he thought that bird was entirely self-absorbed and just liked to hear itself make noise.

 

“So, what do you do?” Sinjir asked him, and Finn realized he had no idea what he was asked about. Some type of potential malfunction, maybe? It wasn’t his fault he hadn’t been able to hear the question over the sound of the bird’s squawking. Sinjir was staring at him, waiting for him to give some type of response. Poe was watching him too, and that was even more unsettling. He looked down at the panel between him and Sinjir. Some of the wires had been disconnected, so it must have been a question about that. It didn’t happen often, but rough encounters with Kaiju could knock systems loose.

 

“I connect this green wire here?” Finn said hopefully as he grabbed the wire and attached it to the spot.

 

“And you just blew up yourself and your copilot,” Sinjir informed him, leaning back in his seat.

 

“It was the yellow wire,” Poe suggested helpfully while BB-8 bobbed his head up and down.

 

“If something happens, you should just let him do the repairs,” Sinjir told him.

 

“At the Academy, I was trained to pilot a Mark Twenty-Five,” he protested. He was disappointed in himself. He had never had trouble with any of his classes before, and now, there were days it felt like Sinjir was about to give him up as a lost cause.

 

“Well, they went back to the Mark Twenty-Four, which is great for him, but shit for you.” Which was why he was stuck in these classes while Poe sat smugly in the corner.

 

“I’d be able to concentrate better if that bird weren’t here,” Finn said quietly so only Sinjir could hear him. “Aren’t you worried it will ruin some of the equipment?”

 

“First of all, this ‘equipment’ is all junk. I take it you don’t like birds?”

 

“Birds are fine, its just that bird I have a problem with.” It was hard to convince Sinjir that the bird was a nuisance when it was making soft cooing noises while rubbing its head up against Poe. “Have you ever had a roommate that would scream at random times for no good reason?”

 

“Can’t say that I have,” Sinjir said with a little have grin that suggested Finn’s complaints were mildly amusing. The life of a Ranger was subject to every scrutiny imaginable. He had probably seen more drama just from watching Rangers than the average person got from watching daily soap operas. “Besides, I have the perfect solution for you. The Shatterdome has a bar; Rangers drink for free. Couple whiskeys in you, that bird won’t be bothering you any more.”

 

“I can’t drink before instruction,” Finn protested, almost too loudly. He would never catch up to Poe’s level if he started showing up to classes tipsy. “I think I might learn better if that bird wasn’t attending classes with us. What’s he going to do, repair the Jaegar for us?”

 

“Sorry, the bird stays,” Sinjir told him, resting his hands against his knees. “General’s orders. The bird has the same security clearance as Poe.”

 

“BB-8 has his own security clearance?” He still didn’t understand what people expected the bird to do. All he had witnessed was it cuddling Poe, squawking gibberish that Poe claimed was the bird talking, and overall just being a bother to everyone.

 

“I don’t ask questions, but that’s your copilot over there. So you better try to make nice with the bird.” Not very likely. Poe had given him some food to give BB-8 once, and the bird had pecked at his hand instead of the peace offering. He didn’t think they were going to be best friends any time soon.

 

~*~*~

 

A few days later, after a long day of training, Poe crawled into his bunk, claiming he was too tired to make it onto the top.

 

“And what makes you think I want to sleep in your bed?” he countered, feeling just a little cross about the situation. It was the one thing he could expect to be the same at the end of the day, and now Poe was invading his space.

 

“Who says you have to sleep in my bed?” Poe said from where he had collapsed on the mattress. “There’s enough room here for the two of us.” If by enough room, he meant that the person on the outside would fall off should they so much as twitch, then sure, there was enough room for both of them. “Listen, buddy, if you’re uncomfortable with sleeping next to me, then perhaps you should rethink your decision to jump into my mind.”

 

“I just thought since you value your privacy so much that you would be much more comfortable sleeping alone for the rest of your life.” He didn’t give Poe a chance to respond before crawling over him and dropping down on the mattress next to him. At least he was squished against the wall, and while it was vaguely uncomfortable, he was in no danger of falling out.

 

BB-8, from his perch across the room, started rambling the same sounds repeatedly which might just have been words.

 

“BB-8, language,” Poe said, and the bird quieted down, lowering its head as it continued to stare at them. “Thank you.” The bird mumbled something once more, but then he turned his back towards them

 

“So you can actually get that bird to listen to you?” All the times he had stayed up all night listening to that bird, and all he had to do was ask Poe if he would ask BB-8 to quiet down.

 

“Not all the time,” Poe said. “He can be stubborn.”

 

Just like his owner. He still had no idea why Poe had decided to collapse in his bed when they had had much more grueling days and Poe had managed to climb up into his bunk just fine. It had actually been a rather easy, if long, day since they were supposed to be doing their initial drift run tomorrow.

 

“Goodnight, Poe,” he said, determined to make the best of the situation.

 

“Goodnight, buddy.”

 

For the first time since they had moved into the Shatterdome together, BB-8 remained quiet through the entire night.

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know it's been a long wait since Chapter 2 was updated. The thing is, this chapter was originally much longer, but I decided to cut it down and rework a few chapter breaks on later installments. The good news is, this means that Chapter 4 is already half written, so it shouldn't be as long until the next chapter is finished.


	4. The Drift

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Finn and Poe undertake their first drift with the expected results. Finn, still eager to prove himself as a pilot, continues to strive to find a way to make a successful drift with Poe and receives information from an unexpected source.

They weren’t going to be tested inside the Jaegar. After too many disasters, the P.P.D.C. had phased that out of the program. People had died, valuable equipment had been destroyed. In order to prevent anything from happening again, initial drifts had been moved to outside the Jaegars. It would still be a few more weeks until he and Poe would be able to step inside the cockpit of Renegade Nova.

 

General Organa was there, along with their entire support crew and Norra and Sinjir. The support crew they needed, General Organa was personally invested in their success. He kind of wished they hadn’t brought in Norra and Sinjir. He didn’t want to go back to classes and face them again if they failed here today.

 

Poe hadn’t really given him any indication of their probable success. He still acted the same way he had from the first time they had met. He had given no signs that he was more willing to drift now than he had been at the beginning. What if they were wrong about the MRIs? What if Poe had somehow managed to lose the ability to drift? Whatever had caused the problems with Ranger Wexley and Black One might not have been resolved simply because Finn had come into Poe’s life. It would be naive to think so. With all the training they had been doing, he hadn’t had time to try to break down any of Poe’s remaining resistance to the notion of drifting with him.

 

He tried to wipe his palms on the arm rests of the chair he was sitting on, but it didn’t do much good since he was already encased in a suit similar to the one they would be using inside Renegade Nova. This one, however, would not to the Jaegar. It was only designed to get them used to wearing the suit while they also adjusted to the sensation of drifting with each other.

 

Finn couldn’t see Poe, seated back to back as they were, but he was wearing the same suit. They were connected to each other through the Pons suspended from the ceiling. He had refused to look up at it. All the exposed bits of machinery were intimidating up close. Between the machinery and the people watching, he almost wanted to put it off for at least the additional week most Rangers had. Or at least until he had the time to talk to Poe about this, make sure Poe would bridge that gap with him.

 

About twenty percent of Rangers failed their initial drift together. It wouldn’t be something to be embarrassed about, but with the two of them, the General might take it as an indicator that she should rethink her decision to back the two of them as San Francisco’s premiere Rangers. She might just consider pulling them from the program altogether.

 

“Prepare for Renegade Nova’s initial drift,” their crew lead announced. The rest of the support team went to work and he could feel the machine come to life above him.

 

“Alright, gentlemen, you know what to expect,” General Organa told them as the support staff sent messages to each other. Numbers that he was too nervous to pay attention to.

 

One of them knew what to expect a little more than other. Finn only knew what to expect from second hand accounts and what they had told him at the Academy. They had given him exercises, things to do to prepare himself for the drift. What it would be like to merge your mind with another person. Each individual was different, so there was no way to prepare someone entirely, but there were generalities. He took a deep breath and tried to clear his mind. It would be easier if he didn’t have any preconceived notions going in, easier to join his mind with someone else.

 

“Initiating neural handshake,” a support staffer said, and he felt… something. Almost like his mind was expanding. Slowly, but still expanding, like other experiences, other knowledge was being added on to what he already had stored away.

 

“It’s not going to work,” Norra said, and he tried to ignore his own surge of annoyance and disappointment. And a little voice deep inside that agreed with her that he was absolutely certain had not come from him. He still liked to maintain hope that this would work that they two of them would be able to drift together. If he could catch some small glimpses of Poe’s thoughts, the reverse was also probably true. He tried to focus on the optimism that they would be able to drift together, and pushed that thought to the forefront of his mind.

 

“Neural handshake at twenty percent,” someone said from the support staff. “So far, so good.” He could feel the progress they were making, additional memories being added, more thoughts, more fears. The knowledge of what it was like to be piloting a Jaegar. The thrill of defeating a Kaiju, knowing that he had made a difference in the world, that people were safe because of him. With each passing second, things continued to flow in so fast that he couldn’t focus in on any of them.

 

“Thirty percent.”

 

“They’re going to be just fine,” Sinjir said in a vote of confidence for them that he much appreciated. If only he could somehow force Poe to believe that as well. “Those two have a strong connection.”

 

Someone outside of them had to believe in them. Maybe if Poe heard it enough, he might just start to believe it himself.

 

“Thirty one percent.”

 

Then he felt it, like some sort of wall. Like his mind was no longer free to expand, like something was actively blocking him. Something like Poe. He tried probing at it gently, asking Poe to let him in. They were so close to their initial run actually being considered a success.

 

“They’re at a stalemate,” one of the support team announced, but he couldn’t focus on that. He needed to concentrate on the drift. To see if he could still find a way to get through to Poe. He tried probing at the resistance again, but this time he was violently pushed away and locked back into his own mind.

 

“Neural handshake is a zero percent.”

 

They would not be drifting today. Maybe they would never drift. They had been so close, he had felt the fringes of Poe’s mind right before he had been violently rejected.

 

“I told you they weren’t ready,” Norra was telling General Organa as Finn leaned his head back against the chair. What he wouldn’t give to be in Poe’s mind right now, to understand why he was resisting the drift. Poe didn’t want anyone else in his mind, even though he had once let Ranger Wexley in. Something had changed, and now he was drift shy. “The connection is there. They work together in physical training like they have known each other forever.” Despite what Captain Phasma said, there had to be a way to get through to him. To convince Poe that it was safe to allow him into his mind. “They need to find a way to break down the barriers they’ve built between each other.”

 

“I think I might know something that could help with that,” Sinjir volunteered in a way that Finn was very uncomfortable with.

 

~*~*~

 

Sound proof and light proof, they were completely isolated from the outside world. Finn knew there was a chance that drifting with someone could wind up being uncomfortable. It was a highly intimate thing, joining your mind to another person, knowing their every innermost thoughts and feelings and allowing the other person to know the same in return. Still, when he woke that morning, he had not been expecting to be thrust and locked into a small space with Ranger Dameron.

 

The chamber was small, although there was a good bit of room above their heads. As far as personal space went, however, it wasn’t possible for both of them to be in there at the same time without touching each other. He was sure there must have been some sort of ventilation system, to allow them to breath. The chamber was lit well enough that he could see all the walls, but even if he couldn’t, he would be able to touch all of them anyway.

 

They called it the isolation chamber. He had heard rumors that such a process existed, for pilots who needed that extra little push for a successful drift, but he hadn’t thought it was real. Not in this capacity at any rate. He had hoped they would have at least provided enough room for them to move around. Instead, they were locked in there, pressed so tightly together that he could smell Poe’s breath. If Poe was claustrophobic, he was going to find out soon enough, and in the worst possible way. On the bright side, BB-8 was not allowed to join them in there. It was the only break he had from the bird over the last six weeks.

 

“How long do you think they’re going to keep us in here?” he asked Poe when the silence was starting to verge on unbearable. It was starting to get warm in there, two bodies in a small space with no where to move that at least part of his body was not brushing up against a part of Poe.

 

“Until they get what they want I suppose,” Poe told him, glancing off to the right. “They’re probably watching us right now, waiting for us to have some kind of breakthrough.”

 

With the way Poe resisted almost everything about their training, they could be in there for days. They rested in silence for a bit more, Poe staring absently towards the side, him staring at Poe’s face. The slight stubble on his jaw, the graceful eyelashes bold against his skin.

 

“Why don’t you want to drift with me?” he asked before Poe could fall asleep on him or something. Not too many ways he could avoid the question in here, no where to run, no bird to divert his attention.

 

“What makes you think I don’t want to drift with you?”

 

“I felt you resist me.”

 

“I’m here, aren’t I?” Poe protested. “I came to the Shatterdome, I’m attending all these classes with you. What more do you want from me?”

 

Not much, only a willingness to drift with him instead of pushing him away all the time. “An honest answer for once.”

 

Poe stared at him straight in the eye, which was a little disconcerting given their proximity. He wasn’t going to back down when he might actually get some answers out of him. He had memorized almost everything from Poe’s file, and there had to be some clues in there as to why Poe insisted on building this wall between them. There was the one thing that might make things awkward between two pilots were it not known about before hand.

 

“Is it because of your preference towards men?” he asked and Poe glared at him. He almost wished he hadn’t asked the question in the isolation chamber for his own peace of mind. “Is that the reason you’re hesitant about drifting with me?” Hesitant wasn’t quite the word to describe it, and it wasn’t the word the support crew had used either.

 

“If there’s an issue with my sexuality, that’s your hangup, not mine.”

 

He hadn’t thought this through. If it was in Poe’s file, then Ranger Wexley would have had to have known. There had to be some connection between himself and Ranger Wexley Finn couldn’t find. Perhaps he could ask someone to give him access to Wexley’s file. See what they had in common that might be pushing Poe away.

 

“So were you and Ranger Wexley, uh…?” He didn’t know the correct way to finish that question without being too vulgar about it.

 

“That’s none of your damn business, that’s what that is.” Poe snapped at him as he tried to lean back away from him. Not that he could go very far.

 

Silence reigned in the isolation chamber again. The tension in the air between them was the thickest it had ever been, and there was still the possibility that the General would leave them in there for days.

 

“I picked a bad time to start this conversation,” he admitted, and Poe grunted in agreement. Still, it was the most information he had gotten out of Poe in a long time. He sighed.

 

“Poe, I’m not going to give you a long speech about how the world needs you, because I know you’ve already heard it.” From multiple sources, most likely. Probably again when General Organa had asked him to participate in drift testing.

 

“And I know Ranger Wexley replaced you rather quickly, and regardless of the circumstances, I’m sure that hurt.” More than Poe was likely to admit. He reached down and grabbed Poe’s hand. “But you have to understand, there is no other copilot for me. No on else has even been remotely compatible with me.”

 

He gave Poe’s hand a gentle squeeze. “Except for you. You tested with me at scores I never imagined possible for myself. There are no other pilots for me.” Without him, he would never be able to pilot a Jaegar. He would never get to prove to the world that they were wrong about him.

 

“Whatever it is you’re afraid of, whatever you don’t want anyone else to know, I promise, I won’t pry. I will never go searching through your mind.” Poe’s pupils widened briefly at that. “But you’re going to have to trust me, and you’re going to have to let me in. If I start digging, you can leave and I won’t hold it against you. But I need you, Poe.”

 

~*~*~

 

The bar was alright, Finn supposed, but it was free. He had never been much of a drinker, so there wasn’t much room for comparison. He was mostly there for something to do. And he was fairly certain that the bar was the last place someone would look for him. Poe was… off somewhere. He hadn’t bothered to ask where, since he needed some time alone to think. Besides, he was fairly sure BB-8 wouldn’t be allowed in the bar lest he start to drink from someone’s cup. Open alcohol and birds did not mix well.

 

“I see you took my advice about the free beverages,” Sinjir said as he sat down on the stool next to him. He wasn’t looking for company, but he wasn’t going to turn him away either. “Where’s your copilot?”

 

“He’s not technically my copilot yet,” he said before gulping down the rest of his beer. And if they failed to drift again, they might never be copilots. He knew enough, maybe he could be an instructor like Norra or Sinjir. Train the next generation of Rangers so they could learn from his mistakes.

 

“Still giving you trouble about drifting?”

 

He had laid everything on the line for Poe, and he still didn’t know what he was going to do tomorrow. Hence, the drinking.

 

“How bout you could share your free drinks with me, get us something from the top shelf?”

 

His beer was empty, and if he wanted to drink himself into oblivion, he was going to need something more.

 

“Why would I do something like that?”

 

“Because I was at the Shatterdome when Ranger Dameron retired.”

 

If there was even the slightest chance that something Sinjir said could help him with Poe, he needed to hear him out. He gestured for the bartender to come over to them.

 

“Give the Ranger something good,” Sinjir said as the man came closer to them. “He’s saving your life and he wants to get good and drunk.” If getting drunk would get Sinjir to give him more information, he would facilitate that in any way he could.

 

The bartender returned with two glasses filled with a golden liquid. The stuff burned as it went down his throat, but Sinjir didn’t seem to mind. He drank it like he was the one who needed to be drunk before having this conversation. He let his drink sit on the counter, content to let Sinjir finish his before he pressed him to talk.

 

“About Ranger Dameron?” he prompted once Sinjir’s glass had been emptied twice.

 

“I don’t know everything. I doubt anyone knows the whole story.” Anything was more than what Poe had been willing to tell him. “You are familiar with the Kaiju cultists, correct?”

 

Familiar in the way that they were to everyone. He had heard the occasional news story, had seen the way Poe reacted to their mention. He had no personal experience with them, for which he was grateful. Not everyone walked away from them unscathed.

 

“Every couple of decades or so, a new one rises into prominence. A few years ago, the P.P.D.C. was alerted to a new group calling themselves the First Order. General Organa wanted them investigated, and she wanted a Ranger volunteer to do it.

 

“The mission was dangerous, and would require recklessness and cunning to survive.”

 

“So Ranger Dameron volunteered.” He had only come to test with him because he couldn’t resist the challenge.

 

“He was given three months to find the cult, infiltrate them, and return with as much information as he could. Ranger Wexley was told Dameron was taking a few months leave to care for his father.

 

“Three months later, Ranger Dameron comes back with nothing to report on the First Order. Wouldn’t even tell us what he had done with the time he was gone. A few weeks later, a Kaiju targets Guatemala. He goes to drift with Ranger Wexley, nothing happens. A month later, he officially announces his retirement, and I don’t see him again until he shows up here with you.”

 

“Do you think the First Order did something to him? Erased his memory? Made him unable to drift?”

 

“You wouldn’t have gotten anywhere with him if he was unable to drift.”

 

So it was possible whatever had happened during those three months had absolutely no bearing on his current predicament. In fact, it really didn’t tell him much of anything except Poe had potentially had a run in with the First Order.

 

“None of this is going to help me drift with him.”

 

“No, and I never said it would. For all I know, he might have decided he no longer liked working with Ranger Wexley.” Which would mean he didn’t really like the idea of working with him either.

 

“So why tell me any of this?”

 

“Because General Organa is obsessed with the First Order. If you drift with him, you’ll be a part of it. She’ll want the information she thinks Poe withheld from her. No telling what she would do to know what was inside his head.”

 

“Including encouraging our drift testing and instating us at her home base,” he said as he leaned back in his seat. She didn’t really believe in them; she just knew he was compatible with Poe and she could get information out of him.

 

“Perhaps. Are you still going to drift with him?”

 

~*~*~

 

“Neural handshake at twenty-five percent.”

 

There was the resistance again, but this time he was expecting it. He didn’t push, or prod, or try to figure out what Poe was keeping to himself. He promised Poe he wouldn’t pry, and he had no intention of breaking that promise. Whatever the General wanted from Poe, he couldn’t see how any of it could be worth it.

 

“Thirty percent.”

 

That was as far as they had gotten the last time, and he could feel Poe’s resistance growing stronger. He couldn’t break through it or even throw his consciousness up against it. But he could retreat back to his mind. Tempting as it might be to go through Poe’s mind and get the first hand Ranger experience sooner, it wasn’t going to get Poe to drift with him.

 

“Twenty-eight percent.”

 

Maybe he had retreated too far back. There had to be some middle ground they weren’t finding. Rangers fought together all the time without becoming lost in each other. One of them was not supposed to do all the merging. Instead of pushing himself onto Poe, he tried reaching out to him, like extending a metaphorical hand. Poe was still unsure, he could feel his hesitancy as surely as if it were his own. He closed his eyes to block everything out except the connection he was building with Poe.

 

“Thirty-two percent, thirty-five percent.”

 

Trust me, he tried to convey to Poe with every fiber of his being, every brain wave that was bouncing back and forth between the two of them. Slowly, he felt Poe reaching back towards him.

 

“Forty percent, fifty percent.”

 

Thoughts and memories flowed through his mind and he let them drift by without pause or investigation. Foods he had never eaten, words he had never heard, people he had never met. A lifetime of memories that were simultaneously his and not his.

 

“We have a successful neural handshake.”

 

He knew he should have been ecstatic, but a large part of him? them? was just relieved.

 

“Raise your right arm,” General Organa ordered, and even though she didn’t address either of them, he obeyed the command. “Good. Now lower it and raise your left arm.” He couldn’t see what Poe was doing, but he could feel him moving alone with him. He wondered if they were recording it. He would like to see how in synch they were on their first run. “Lower that please.” He dropped his hand back down and gripped the front of the arm rest.

 

“Now stand.” He stood up and resisted the urge to turn around. It felt so weird, like he was facing two directions at once but he was only able to see in one. “Raise your fist to your chest.”

 

He responded to that command as well, without thinking about the fact that she hadn’t told them which hand to use. What if Poe decided to kick him out again? What if next time they wouldn’t be able to drift at all?

 

“Very good, gentlemen, you may sit down,” General Organa announced, and he eagerly sat back down, gripping both arm rests. He didn’t think he would be this nervous to drift with someone for the first time. “You may disconnect them. Make sure you analyze the results.”

 

Because it wasn’t him that had been so nervous he realized as Poe retreated from his mind and his hand unclenched as he was left with only his thoughts. Poe, despite being the veteran Ranger, was nervous about drifting with him. He took the helmet off and passed it over to one of their support staff.

 

“Poe, you are dismissed,” General Organa said as she walked over to where they were still seated back to back. “I need to speak to Finnick alone for a moment.”

 

A few snippets of a conversation with Sinjir came trickling back to him. About Poe and General Organa and the First Order. He froze in his seat while Poe stood.

 

“I’ll see you back in our room,” Poe said as he clapped him on the shoulder. Just like that, Finn was left alone with the General. He would have settled for BB-8 in there with him.

 

“Congratulations on your successful drift with Ranger Dameron.”

 

“Thank you, General,” he said. He hadn’t been sure they were going to pull it off, to be honest. Just because he had made a promise to Poe didn’t mean Poe was obligated to believe him.

 

“You must be very proud. Your connection was one of the strongest on record.” So she expected there to be little secrets between the two of them. “The next time a Kaiju comes our way, Renegade Nova will be dispatched to engage it with additional support from another Jaegar.”

 

“It’ll be an honor, General.” To pilot Renegade Nova with Poe, to protect the world from the Kaiju. But not to be a pawn in her personal war against the First Order.

 

“It must have been an experience, drifting with Ranger Dameron. The two of you have such different backgrounds, there must have been something in there that caught your attention. Maybe something from his time with Black One.” She knew him too well. Something like that normally would have baited him.

 

“Ranger Dameron thinks almost exclusively in Spanish. I couldn’t make sense of any of it.”


	5. Kaiju

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Renegade Nova gets its first drop, with a little assistance from someone from Poe's past. But things don't go as smoothly as anticipated, and the Kaiju still have a few new tricks.

Serene waves lapped at his ankles. The sun beat on his back. It was calm, almost peaceful. The ocean to one side of him, the graveyard on the other side, stretching out for miles in a nuclear wasteland. Black One was in there somewhere, or at least her skeletal remains were still there. Rotting away, _useless_ , unable to help anyone anymore.

 

He saw something out of the corner of his eye, a person riding away on a motorbike. Impossible. Nothing could survive in the Graveyard. It was an uninhabitable wasteland. He could see the trail of dust rising up from the path the motorbike had taken. He was imagining things, nothing could live out there. _Nothing. Useless._ But there had to have been someone out there. The dust was still settling. Black One was probably covered in that filth. _Is it real?_

 

“Renegade Nova, please respond.”

 

“We’re fine,” Poe responded back over the comm system before looking pointedly at Finn. There was nothing out there. The message had come across as clearly as if Poe had spoken aloud.

 

Nothing but the remains of Jaegars and forgotten memories. He could see Black One as she used to be, black and red and sometimes splattered with blue. She had once been a beautiful sight. Now there’s nothing left but the shell. How appropriate. _Traitor._

 

The last bit was whispered. He had heard that voice before, every time he had been hooked up with Poe in their practice runs. Most of the time it was a brief whisper, flitting by so quickly that he never had to time to really focus on it before it drifted away again. He couldn’t go digging for it either, but that voice didn’t sound like Poe. It was far more insidious, far more intimidating. Like the voice of someone he wouldn’t want to come face to face with.

 

Poe didn’t seem to be reacting to it though, so maybe it was him. Maybe it was all in his head.

 

“Command Center, I’m picking up some interference in the drift.”

 

Poe seemed more annoyed at his comment than anything else. Did that mean he couldn’t feel it? But that should actually be impossible given the situation they were in.

 

“Finn, could you be a little more specific?”

 

He didn’t think he could without making the entire command center think he was crazy. Either way, since he had mentioned it, he was going to be subjected to a psych evaluation once this was over. He was in it now, he might as well dive in all the way.

 

“Command, it feels like there’s someone else connected with us. I keep hearing some sort of whisper.” A persistent thing that was more a nuisance than anything else, but if Renegade Nova had been compromised… Lightcap had made the initial drift from a distance to support the neural load with the first test pilot. If she had found a way to do it before, someone else might have refitted the technology to do it now.

 

“Ranger, now is not the time to listen to the voices inside your head unless they belong to Ranger Dameron.” That was Sinjir, likely mocking him. Or both of them. He heard some sort of aborted snigger from someone on the support team that he couldn’t identify.

 

“It’s probably just some leftover static from Ranger Wexley,” General Organa cut in before anyone else could comment on the voices in his head. “I’m sure it’s nothing to worry about. The connection is secure.”

 

He doubted it. Nothing about Ranger Wexley’s profile suggested he could ever be behind those whispers. Nothing in Poe’s thoughts pointed towards it being remnants of Wexley either. Nor did Poe give any indication he heard the same voice. He should have. Their neural handshake had been good when they had been dropped off at the location, and the support team was still closely monitoring them, along with General Organa. He must have been imagining the whispers. They were monitoring everything, and they would have noticed if someone else had hopped onto the connection.

 

“Command, who is our back up?” Poe asked. At least someone was kind enough to change the subject for him, and he mentally cataloged all currently active Jaegars. They likely would have sent someone from their side of the ocean. Which was a shame, because there were other Rangers he would desperately love to meet. Later. He would have time to meet some of the others later.

 

“Classified,” General Organa replied back. Classified? They were going to see who it was in a few minutes, so he didn’t understand why they couldn’t just tell them now. “Besides, it would be no fun if we told you now.”

 

He was frankly more concerned that the Kaiju was going to arrive before their backup did. Not that they couldn’t handle it by themselves, but it would feel so much better to have it and to show the world that they didn’t need it. That they were more than capable of taking on the Kaiju together. He hoped word of this battle would reach Phasma and she would see how wrong she was about the two of them. They were meant to fight the Kaiju together.

 

“Don’t tell me it’s the Hansen twins,” Poe protested from beside him. Hansen twins, from Australia. They had one of the highest kill streaks on record. Conceited little brats who thought far too highly of themselves. They once declared themselves far superior to Black One when it came to killing Kaiju. “The Hansen twins don’t know how to stay back. They’ll kill that Kaiju before we even get the chance to look at it.”

 

“Much as I would love a bit of friendly competition between you and the Hansen twins, I’m afraid we couldn’t get them.” So the most likely suspects had to be someone from their side of the ocean. Someone close by that wouldn’t be missed should the Kaiju detour somewhere else at the last minute. Someone from, say, Alaska, or Guatemala. Alaska would be preferable.

 

He saw something moving towards them from the open ocean, and they turned to watch it. Not the Kaiju. Their back-up was being airlifted in. The gray Jaegar was dropped into the water, and Poe’s irritation washed over him like the ocean at their legs. Snap Testor, from Guatemala, piloted by Temmin Wexley and Jessika Pava, possibly the last two people on Earth he wanted to see right now. Not that they couldn’t actually see them seeing as how they were inside the Jaegar. Still, knowing they were there was more than bad enough. They could have handled this on their own. They didn’t need help from Wexley and Pava. The two of them together were more than enough to take on one measly Kaiju. There were no indications that the Rift was widening again to send through more Kaiju. They would be fine without any interlopers.

 

“Poe, good to see you back in a Jaegar,” a new male voice said over their comm system. Wexley, Poe’s thoughts supplied a little belatedly. His own brain supplied the knowledge that it was not the same voice he had heard before. “In a manner of speaking.”

 

“Ranger Dameron, its going to be an honor to finally meet you in person,” Ranger Pava chimed in. She must have known lots of things about Poe from all the times she had drifted with Wexley. She probably knew more about Poe than he did, second hand knowledge gleaned from Wexley’s mind. What he had been like before whatever had happened to him. Better. He had been better.

 

“General, are you sure Snap Testor is our only option?” Poe asked, well aware that Wexley and Pava could hear him. “What about Darklighter and Horn from Alaska?”

 

“We considered that, but you and Ranger Wexley have worked together before.”

 

“What about Seastriker and Greer? Mirror Bright is just sitting pretty there in Hawaii even though the Kaiju rarely bother with it.”

 

“Ranger Dameron,” the General’s voice cut in sharply. “Snap Testor is the assistance you’re going to get. If you don’t like it, I’ll pull you and let them take care of the Kaiju on their own.”

 

“Yes, General Organa,” Poe said with a resignation that neither of them felt. Finn had kept his promise not to pry, but he could feel how much Poe didn’t want either one of them there. How betrayed he felt. “What’s the ETA on our target?”

 

“It should be there any minute.”

 

Good. They should be able to get things started. They would kill the Kaiju by themselves, and prove that they didn’t need help, especially from Ranger Pava. He could already feel the adrenaline pulsing, urging him to protect the world and take out one of the Kaiju. Snap Testor raised an arm and pointed behind them. They turned around and there it was, rising out of the sea. It stalked on four legs with a spiked tail twice the length of its body swishing through the water. Long fangs descended from it upper jaw, resembling a saber tooth tiger. The Kaiju prowled towards them, low to the surf, and…

 

“Why’s it so tiny?” Ranger Pava asked. Tiny wasn’t exactly the word he would use, as it was still bigger than most creatures native to Earth.

 

“It’s the smallest Kaiju I’ve ever seen,” Poe remarked as the creature stalked closer to them. Just because it was small didn’t meant they shouldn’t take it out. It just meant it should be that much easier for them. They definitely weren’t going to need Temmin and Pava for this.

 

“Command, are you sure we aren’t missing something?” Ranger Wexley asked over the comms. “This thing isn’t even a category one. Did something else come through the Rift with it?”

 

“We appreciate your concern, Ranger Wexley, and we’ll keep a close eye on the Rift. But that little Kaiju will do a great deal of damage if it reaches land.”

 

“Understood, General,” Finn said as he readied himself for battle. They had one objective. Take out that Kaiju. The rest could be dealt with once they were themselves again. They stalked closer to it, and the Kaiju snarled at them, revealing more sharp teeth inside and a bright blue biforcated tongue. They lunged toward it, no sense in wasting ammo if they didn’t have to, but the damned thing jumped out of the way, blinding them temporarily with the water spray.

 

They turned to find it again, still crouched low in the water and making no attempts to breach land. They lunged and again it evaded. By the time most of their weapons would be ready to fire, the slippery thing would likely have been out of the way. It was small, and should have been an easy target, but it was fast. It was the biggest weakness of the Jaegars. Moving around that much bulk took time. Time that this particular Kaiju was using to run straight at Snap Testor.

 

“Bad kitty,” he heard Ranger Pava say as the other Jaegar smacked it on the side with a closed fist. “You’re supposed to play with them, not us.” The Kaiju landed on its side, and rolled back to its feet with a snarl at Snap Testor.

 

The beast continued to circle the two Jaegars, occasionally making a halfhearted lunge at one of them. They would fight back, but few blows actually landed on it, and those that did seemed a minor inconvenience.

 

“Renegade Nova, your neural handshake is weakening.” Finn hadn’t noticed; he thought they had both been concentrating on destroying the Kaiju. “Ranger Dameron, are you alright? Should we let Snap Testor finish the job?” Like they would really be able to keep up with this thing better than they could. Snap Testor wasn’t going to be any faster.

 

“I’m fine,” Poe responded through gritted teeth. “I’m going to catch this thing and give it to Ranger Pava for a pet.”

 

“I’m not exactly sure where I’d keep it,” Pava said as Snap Testor sidestepped another feeble lunge from the creature.

 

Why hadn’t it gone to land? It was faster than them, it knew it was faster than them, yet it still stayed within range. Maybe they could blast it quickly enough. It snarled at them again.

 

“It’s toying with us,” Finn said as the realization dawned on him. Kaiju weren’t supposed to be smart. They were supposed to mindlessly destroy.

 

“P.P.D.C. Command, we have a problem.” He didn’t recognize that voice, and neither did Poe. “I’m doing recon, and there’s a big Kaiju headed towards California.”

 

“That’s not possible. The sensors would have picked something up if another Kaiju had gotten through.”

 

“Believe it, General,” the person responded. A screen lit up with an aerial view of a huge shape cutting through the water. “That’s no whale, and I would guess its looking to join its friend at San Francisco.”

 

“General, Mirror Bright is ready to go.”

 

“Seattle’s ready to offer assistance. We’ll be there as soon as we can.”

 

“Los Cabos, already on our way.”

 

They still had that little one to deal with, let alone a second one.

 

“Ma’am, I would advice accepting all of them. This thing is bigger than a Category Five.”

 

“Renegade Nova, Snap Testor, change of plans. Take down that first Kaiju by whatever means necessary, then buy our friends some time.” She wanted them to do a suicide run if necessary, and he felt his stomach drop. Poe, on the other hand, exuded tranquility. He had always known this was how he was going to die, inside a Jaegar. Finn just would have preferred for it to not have been on his first run.

 

“No more games,” Wexley said. “We’re blasting this thing.”

 

Snap Testor’s arm lifted quickly and fired a shot directly at the Kaiju. It had been a direct hit, ripping a hole in the creature’s side but it just kept moving.

 

And they were out of time. The other Kaiju was approaching them from the north, the water rising up on either side of it as it cut through the ocean. It rose up in front of them, a bipedal monster taller than either Jaegar. Four eyes on each side of its head regarded them like they were dinner. They could try to blast it full of holes, but that didn’t always work. Just as long as they could keep it from breaching land until the other Jaegars could arrive.

 

The Kaiju reached back and struck at them with a large three clawed paw. Snap Testor blocked the attack with both arms, nearly falling over in the process. He and Poe raised the left arm plasma canon and opened fire into the beast’s torso. It took three shots before it dropped its assault on Snap Testor. The two of them would not be able to stop this thing. Not with the other Kaiju around.

 

The other Kaiju jumped them and sank its fangs into Renegade Nova’s metal arm. The pain raced up his arm like he had been bitten himself. He screamed in pain and clenched his fist. Poe grunted beside him and for a second, he couldn’t feel him any longer.

 

“Left plasma canon offline,” the computer system announced. They slammed their arm back and down, slamming the Kaiju into the sea. It let go of their arm and rolled away.

 

“Renegade Nova, your neural handshake is getting worse.”

 

“We’re fine. We can keep it together.” They could, even though the left arm was almost completely useless.

 

Two shots came from within the wasteland. The most ridiculous looking Jaegar he had ever seen was striding towards them.

 

“That’s my Jaegar,” Poe said. As he said it, Finn recognized the black and red pattern on the arm. The entire Jaegar was constructed from parts in the graveyard.

 

“Who the hell is that?” Ranger Wexley asked.

 

It didn’t matter who it was. They were willing to fight. The new Jaegar had a large pole in its right hand. They swung it at the large Kaiju. Maybe with the three of them, they might just be able to take it down.

 

“Renegade Nova, your neural handshake is too weak. Pull out or we’ll be forced to disconnect you.”

 

“With all due respect, General, we’d rather stay and fight.” He knew he spoke for both of them. Poe would never walk way in the middle of a battle. Snap Testor and the newcomers wouldn’t be able to handle both Kaiju. If nothing else, maybe they could complete their original mission of taking out the smaller Kaiju.

 

“Is that cockpit from the Millennium Falcon?” Ranger Pava asked as the new Jaegar surged forward again. “The one piloted by Han Solo?”

 

He froze inside the drivesuit. He couldn’t see Poe beside him, couldn’t see the battle around them. Everything just disappeared until he was completely lost inside himself. He couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe. He was going to drown.

 

“General, if you pull them, they’ll all die. Snap Testor and that other Jaegar can’t handle this on their own.”

 

Things came back into focus around him. Snap Testor and the new Jaegar were taking on the large Kaiju. Where was the other one?

 

“We’re fine, General,” Poe responded through gritted teeth. They just needed to hold on a little longer. Just a little longer.

 

“If we don’t pull them soon, we’ll lose them all anyway.”

 

They took a step forward to join the other two in engaging the Kaiju. The small one pounced on them from the side. It attached itself to them and pierced its fangs into the Jaegar’s head. Alarms and metal wailed as the long fangs breached the cockpit. They tried to push it off with the left arm while punching it with the other. The Kaiju just sank its teeth in deeper. It would break through to them soon. Their drivesuits wouldn’t be much protection against those teeth.

 

“Disconnect them. Now!”

 

A searing pain ripped through his left shoulder. Fire laced down his spine. And then nothing.


	6. Aftermath

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In the aftermath of their first battle, Poe is injured, and Rey is taken back to the San Francisco Shatterdome for questioning. Meanwhile, the P.P.D.C discovers a new threat that none of them could have anticipated.

“Renegade Nova, come in.”

 

Everything hurt as he regained consciousness, especially down his spine. He was lying on his back, and because he was still strapped in, he couldn’t move around much. He could no longer feel Poe. He couldn’t see Poe, either.

 

“Finn, Poe, one of you, please, respond.”

 

“Command, this is Finn,” he responded when he thought he could speak a full sentence. A giant hole had been ripped in the Jaegar, and the inside was splattered with blue. Beyond that was a partially cloudy sky. He couldn’t see anything else, but he could still hear things. The growls of the Kaiju, the answering clang of the Jaegars. He wanted to see what was going on, but the rig had locked and was keeping him in place.

 

“Finn!” That was Ranger Wexley, likely still locked in battle with the Kaiju he should have been fighting. “How’s Poe? He hasn’t responded!”

 

Honesty was the best policy in this situations, and Poe hadn’t exactly responded to him either. “I can’t see him.” The left side of his vision was swallowed by a black mass. He couldn’t see anything out of his left eye. “I can’t see anything out of my left eye.” He tried to turn his head enough to get a better look at at Poe, but his neck would barely turn. Like his head suddenly weighed five hundred times more than it should have.

 

“Finn, don’t try to move,” the General informed him. “There’s a short in the Jaegar. We’ve manged to disconnect you from Poe, but you’re still connected to Renegade Nova.”

 

Which explained why he couldn’t move his head very much, but didn’t give them an answer about Poe’s condition.

 

“Poe’s vitals indicate that he’s still alive.”

 

Still alive wasn’t a good enough answer. If he hadn’t brought Poe back out here, he wouldn’t be in whatever condition he was in. He could be bleeding out next to him and he couldn’t do anything about it. Through the gap in Renegade Nova’s cockpit, the larger Kaiju came into view, locked in combat with the new Jaegar and Snap Testor. They seemed to be holding it off for the time being, maybe long enough for one of the other teams to make the drop. Not that he could help them. He couldn’t even get out of the rig, and he could hardly operate the Jaegar on his own.

 

Poe still hadn’t responded to him, and outside of the drift, he couldn’t feel him any longer. The Kaiju had broken through on Poe’s side. If those teeth had gotten too close, the drivesuit would not have been able to protect him. There had been that searing pain in his shoulder right before they had been disconnected. What if something had happened to Poe? They couldn’t get accurate readings back at the Shatterdome.

 

He inched his left hand outwards.

 

“Finn, it’s not safe to move.”

 

It also wasn’t safe for Poe to be alone over there. He had to have been hurt, or else he would have responded to one of them by now. The General, Temmin… If he was capable of answering, he would not have left them in the dark. It felt like moving his hand through sludge. He probably was, moving the Jaegar’s hand through the silt on the bottom of the ocean.

 

His hand brushed Poe’s arm, and he slid his hand down until he could firmly grip Poe’s hand in his. It felt like Poe lightly gripped his hand back, but it just could have been the reflex from how he had clenched Poe’s hand. Poe could pull through this. He had probably just been knocked unconscious when Renegade Nova had been pushed backwards. He would be fine.

 

They would both be fine, seeing as how the larger Kaiju seemed to have forgotten about them. Once it was finished with the other two, it would likely move on to land. They at least would be able to survive. But not at the expense of the other four Rangers. Snap Testor and the other would only be able to delay it for so long.

 

The new Jaegar swung it’s homemade weapon at the Kaiju. The beast grabbed the pole and yanked it away. It snapped the metal in half, tossing part back into the ocean. The other part landed in the surf next to the right arm of Renegade Nova.

 

“Snap Testor, keep up the good work. Your backup will get there soon.”

 

Soon was not good enough. They would tire out before it could get there. All it would take was one mistake, and millions of lives would be at risk. Besides, Renegade Nova was there now, and it didn’t seem like the other Kaiju was still around. The scanners and monitors were accurately working. Only one Kaiju was still showing. He reached out with his other hand to grab the half of the pole next to him. He tilted it back slightly to check the tip. Sharp. Very sharp. Sharp enough to pierce through a Kaiju’s thick skin.

 

“Finn, stop moving,” the General ordered. “I don’t want to explain to Ranger Dameron why you died and he did not.”

 

“I can do this,” he protested. Maybe he couldn’t; maybe he would die trying. Then again, if he died, maybe Poe would be able to retire in peace this time. No other young Rangers would go looking for him, asking him to put his life needlessly in danger. “I have an idea. Have them herd the Jaegar towards me.”

 

“This doesn’t sound like a good plan. Eighty-five percent of Renegade Nova’s systems are offline, including, both legs, the left arm, and visuals.”

 

“I can still use the right arm. If we can knock it over onto this pole, we can immobilize it long enough for close range shots from the other two Jaegars.”

 

“I like this plan better than hope I live long enough for back-up to arrive,” Ranger Pava chimed in, her voice broken by static. Water must be getting in somewhere. The whole thing would shut down soon.

 

“I’m in,” a new female voice said over the comms. She must have been one of the Rangers in the new Jaegar. She sounded like she could get things done, like she had no fear of the giants they were facing. Like someone he wanted to get to know better. If they ever made it away from the Kaiju.

 

Through the gap, he watched the other two Jaegars circle around the Kaiju. He tightened his grip on the pole. They would only get one chance at this. There was also the possibility the Kaiju would fall on them, crushing him and Poe underneath it’s weight.

 

The two Jaegar’s resumed their assault on the other side of the Kaiju. It took one shuddering step back, then another. Just a few more steps, and this could all be over. The Kaiju took another step backwards. It’s heel collided with Renegade Nova’s foot, and it toppled over.

 

His shoulder burned as he lifted the pole all the way out of the water. Gravity did the rest of the work for him. The Kaiju roared as it sank halfway down the pole. He flinched, thinking it was going to come down on them, but it held, about twenty feet above them. Snap Testor closed in, put the muzzle of the canon against the creature’s head and fired three times into its skull.

 

The Kaiju went limp on the pole, and he relaxed his hand. The staff held, and he gave Poe’s hand a slight squeeze, hoping for any type of response. “Poe?” he whispered into the quiet of the cockpit. Nothing came back to him. Without the pons, without being able to turn his head, he could only rely on the reassurance of the General that his heart was still beating.

 

“Finn, Poe, we’ve already dispatched medical. Hold on just a little longer.”

 

~*~*~

 

She should have bolted. No way they were going to let her keep her Jaegar, the Jaegar she had built with her sweat and hard earned money. They would take it away, and probably lock her away as well.

 

She had the chance to run. The first choppers that arrived had been medical for the Rangers in the fallen Jaegar. She should have gone then. In their haste to get to their injured, it seemed they had forgotten about her. Had they gotten a good enough look to recognize her Jaegar? She could have disappeared back into the Graveyard. Powered everything down. Disappeared before they could throw her in jail. How long would she waste away in a military prison?

 

She hadn’t run. They had picked up her Jaegar and were locking it into one of their hangars. On the ground, she would never be able to get away. There were too many of them. They would overpower her before she could get twenty feet. She should have run.

 

Yet, she had stayed, and four of them were coming towards the cockpit. There was no where for her to hide either. She needed to know how the Rangers were doing. If she had gotten there in time to save them. It had taken her a while to get her Jaegar working, and there had been a deep gash in the cockpit. She hadn’t been expecting both pilots to still be in there.

 

The hatch opened and the four guards made their way through.

 

“Where’s the other pilot?” the leader asked, while the other three were gawking at the inside of her Jaegar. Like they were already dismantling it. They had to have known there was no time for someone else to have escaped while she stayed behind. No Ranger would leave their copilot behind.

 

“I’m the only one,” she told them, mouth dry. Like piloting alone was the bigger crime than appropriating Jaegar tech. The lead stared at her while two of the others moved in deeper as if they were still looking for someone else, or an escape route her accomplice might have taken.

 

“General, you might want to come to Hangar Four,” the lead said without taking his eyes off her. As if she might do a disappearing act like her nonexistent copilot had. “I know Renegade Nova is in medical, but this new Jaegar they brought in? Only has one pilot. Yes, ma’am.”

 

He took a few steps towards her and she disconnected herself from the machine. Her staff was against the back wall, too far away for her to reach should these four turn aggressive. Not that she could take all four of them. Even if she got through them, no telling what was waiting for her on the other side. Other than the obvious jail time.

 

“Right, miss, the General wants to see you,” he gestured rudely with his hand. “I wouldn’t make her wait if I were you.”

 

“I don’t want anyone touching my stuff,” she told him as she walked past him. Two of the others proceeded her out the door, while the third and the lead followed her closely.

 

They had attached some sort of walkway to her cockpit so they wouldn’t have to climb. Nineteen slots other than the one her Jaegar had been deposited in. They were in Hangar Four, so that meant the place could hold at least eighty Jaegars. Had it ever held that many at one time? How many of those she had scavenged had once come from this Shatterdome?

 

At the end of the walkway, the five of them crammed onto a lift and slowly made the descent down to ground level. She took one last look up at her Jaegar as they descended. If she was lucky, they would at least let her get her stuff before they dragged it back to the Graveyard.

 

A shorter woman with grey hair pulled back in a braided bun waited for them, her arms folded over her chest. “Leave us,” she instructed her welcome party, and they departed without another word. “I’m short on time, so I’m going to need some honest answers from you.”

 

“Yes, General.” There was nothing she could try to hide from them that they wouldn’t figure out if they did even a simple sweep of her living area.

 

“What’s your name?”

 

“Rey.” It was a name she hadn’t heard in a long time.

 

“Rey. That’s a nice name. Where did you get that Jaegar?”

 

“I’ll built it myself, with parts scavenged from the Graveyard.”

 

“And no one helped you with this?”

 

“No. No one helped me build it. No one even knows I have it.” Except for them.

 

“That’s my Jaegar you stole,” said a voice she recognized from the battle earlier. She looked behind the General to see two Rangers, a man and a woman, still in their black drivesuits, approaching them. “Part of it any way,” he finished as he stopped next to the General.

 

“Yes, Ranger Wexley, and I was just asking her where she got her Jaegar.”

 

“Illegally, I would say,” the young woman added.

 

“General, how is Renegade Nova?” the man asked, seeming to forget that she was there or that she had stolen part of his Jaegar. Which part had he once controlled?

 

“I don’t know. I was on my way to medical when I had to stop and deal with this.”

 

“Go, Temmin,” the younger woman said. “I’ll stay and deal with this.” He nodded at his copilot before heading off. The young woman he left behind turned to glare at her like she wanted a fight. She was smaller than her. She could probably take her without even breaking a sweat.

 

“Why do you care?” she asked her. “It wasn’t your Jaegar, was it?”

 

“No, but it was Temmin’s.”

 

“It doesn’t matter who the Jaegars belonged to,” the General cut in. “Did you pilot it by yourself?”

 

“Yes.”

 

“Have you done this before?”

 

“No. I wasn’t even sure it would power up.”

 

“You must have known that Jaegar was illegal. Why did you come forward?”

 

“I wanted to help the Rangers. Did they make it?”

 

The other woman looked at the General with worry evident on her face.

 

“I haven’t gone to medical for a report yet. Ranger Dameron was alive, but the Kaiju punctured his drivesuit.”

 

“Can I go with you?” she asked, taking a step forward with her arms outstretched. “To see if the Rangers are okay?” Nobody could witness what they had gone through and not want to make sure they were okay.

 

“Ranger Pava should get checked out as well. We’ll need all our Rangers in top condition.”

 

“Yes, General. After I check in with Ranger Wexley.”

 

The General turned and lead them to medical, even though she was certain she would have been able to find the way herself. There were so many signs. Were they afraid their own people were going to get lost? And where were all the landmarks? The halls were void of anything to differentiate it from the one she had just walked through. She kept checking signs to see which way she would be going to prison. So she could break out and steal her Jaegar back.

 

“Poe!” The call came from somewhere in front of them. “Poe! Where’s Poe?”

 

They stopped outside the glass windows to the room that held the young man. He was strapped down to a chair, struggling against his restraints while a woman in a white coat tried to shine a light in his left eye. Not that she was having much luck. The young man tossed his head back and forth, searching for something.

 

“Poe!”

 

For his copilot, the one who had been injured.

 

Ranger Wexley rejoined them, coming to stand by the General’s side as they stared into the hospital room. “Doctor Kalonia gave me a quick update. They gave Finn a sedative when he got here, but it doesn’t seem to have kicked in.”

 

“No, she certainly has her hands full with him.”

 

He still called desperately for his missing copilot, pulling at the restraints on his arms. If that sedative didn’t kick in soon, he would break free. And probably destroy half the medical wing while looking for his copilot.

 

“Did she say anything about his vision?”

 

“She thinks its temporary from being disconnected so abruptly. She won’t know for certain until she can do a thorough investigation.”

 

Which she probably wasn’t going to get until he was given information about his copilot.

 

“What about Poe?” Ranger Pava asked.

 

“He’s in surgery. The Kaiju’s tooth went into his left shoulder. Broke his collarbone. They couldn’t tell me how close it got to his heart.”

 

“Temmin,” Ranger Pava said, taking a step closer to her copilot.

 

Rey turned back to the man in the chair, forgetting about jail for a moment. He became much quieter, almost slumping back as the doctor finally managed to look in his eye. The glass muffled whatever words she was saying to him, and she wasn’t sure he heard her either. If she hadn’t been able to save both Rangers, none of it would have been worth it.

 

“Rey, I think you should see one of our doctors as well. Piloting alone takes a toll on even the strongest of us.”

 

~*~*~

 

General Organa had been writing up her report on the Kaiju battle, omitting little details about Rey and her Jaegar, when the emergency call had come through. A direct line from P.P.D.C. headquarters. Perhaps they had identified the source of the second Kaiju. Or how it had managed to get past all their sensors. Their scientists had suggested some sort of stealth mechanism, but so far the biological tests had not turned anything up.

 

She answered the call on the vid screen to be greeted with somber faces of the P.P.D.C council.

 

“General Hux, General Pentecost, Commander Antilles,” she greeted them, inclining her head towards them.

 

“General Organa,” General Hux greeted her from where he was situated comfortably in New Zealand. “We were grieved to learn of the fate of Renegade Nova and her Rangers. I understand you had such high hopes for them.”

 

“And those hopes continue,” she said confidently, thinking of Finn being sedated and Poe, who she had not been able to see since he had gone into surgery.

 

“I was lead to believe that Ranger Dameron had been severely injured and might not be able to pilot again.” Damn whoever had been feeding him information. She didn’t need that leaking to the public, not when the Rift was reawakening. People needed to believe that the Rangers would be able to defend them or else the whole system would fall apart.

 

“Ranger Dameron not only will pull through, he’ll be piloting again before the Kaiju figure out what hit them.”

 

“Glad to hear it,” General Pentecost told her, “but we have more pressing matters to deal with. Commander Antilles?”

 

It still sounded wrong to hear him addressed as such. In her mind, he would always be a Ranger first, fighting alongside her brother. It had been too long since she had made a social call to him. She really needed to keep in better touch with him instead of waiting for a disaster. It was just too painful; every time she looked at his face, she was reminded of Luke.

 

“When the second Kaiju arrived, all Shatterdomes turned available resources to figuring out where it came from.”

 

“I take it you won the lottery?”

 

“Unfortunately.” A fourth screen showed her live feed from the breach. Only it wasn’t the breach. There was something wrong with it. The color was off, the shape was wrong, and the surrounding water did not seem quite dark enough.

 

“It’s a second breach, in the Bering Sea.”


	7. Convalesce

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Finn slowly recovers from Renegade Nova's devastating defeat. Confined to medical, he has little else to do besides agonize over Poe's condition and contemplate what the future holds for him and Renegade Nova should he lose his copilot.

 

He didn’t remember being strapped down. No, wait, he had been looking for someone, and they had to strap him down to keep him from finding who he had been looking for. He wasn’t allowed to see them, because it wasn’t safe.

 

He tried to lift his wrists, but they were strapped tight, the leather digging into his skin. That wasn’t right. They wouldn’t tie him down so tightly if they were taking care of him. His ankles were similarly strapped to the legs of the hard chair they placed him in. Another strap was around his chest. It was getting harder to breathe. Each time he exhaled, the strap grew tighter. It would cut him in half.

 

The room was dark too, nothing like the brightly lit medical room he remembered. How did he get here? He had been sent by someone. Where was this place? He strained to see, but nothing penetrated the darkness.

 

The darkness wasn’t even the worst part, however. The thing sitting on top of his head was. It was heavy, metal, and somehow familiar while remaining alien. It made him sweat though, like he already knew what the contraption was for.

 

“You’ll never be a hero,” a voice said from somewhere in the darkness. He knew that voice, but he couldn’t quite place it. There was a cadence about it that rang familiar. “No one will ever forgive you for what you’ve done. No one will ever love you again.”

 

The last was punctuated by a searing pain in his head. It started at the temple and ripped backwards through his skull. Like every cell was being ripped apart. He screamed and bolted upright in the bed, vomiting from the pain. He was still in medical, in a hospital bed. There was something around his head, covering his left eye.

 

“You’re awake,” a voice that was not Poe said. It should have been Poe. What had happened to Poe? “I should call one of the others.”

 

A girl with sun weathered skin and long brown hair sat in the chair next to the bed, her legs folded underneath her on the chair. She started to get up, unwinding her legs.

 

“No, don’t,” he stopped her before she could get far, and she settled back into the chair. He didn’t know who these others were, or even where he was. He didn’t know who this girl was either. He could have been taken captive somewhere. He might even be being held by the First Order. “Where’s Poe?” he asked cautiously, testing out his fingers individually to make sure they still worked. His back ached something fierce.

 

“Poe? Your copilot?” He watched her carefully, gauging all her actions carefully. She might know more than she was letting on.

 

“They haven’t told me much. One of the others would be able to tell you more.”

 

“What others?”

 

“Ranger Wexley, Ranger Pava, an older man named Sinjir and a couple of others.” So he was safe back at the Shatterdome, and Poe was getting the medical attention he needed. The Shatterdome only accepted the best doctors. They could fix almost anything with the technology they had. “We’ve been taking turns sitting with you, waiting for you to wake up. I’m sorry it wasn’t one of the other Rangers.”

 

“Why?”

 

“They know what it’s like to drift with someone.” It was the girl from the battle, the one in the mismatched Jaegar. She was the only one who had spoken because she was the only one piloting. The last person he knew of who could pilot alone like that had been Luke Skywalker, and even he had his naysayers who insisted there was a secret copilot. Yet here was proof that it could be done, sitting next to him, and she had just seen him at his absolute worst.

 

“What’s your name?”

 

“Rey.”

 

“Rey. I’m Finn.” He felt a sharp pain as he remembered when Poe had given him that nickname. Before, he had been Finnick, wannabe Ranger who was about to be kicked out of the Academy. But then Poe had called him Finn, and everything had changed. He became a Ranger with a copilot and a greater purpose. But now he might be losing Poe. Even if he survived, he might not be in any condition to pilot ever again. The girl next to him with the warm face couldn’t give him any answers about Poe. She didn’t even know him. “Rey, who’s taking care of BB-8?” He had to have been out for a few days if they were watching him in rotational shifts.

 

“The bird? I heard it screaming when they showed me to my new room.” Finally, someone else who would share his feelings about that thing. “The poor thing is missing his owner. Ranger Wexley has been checking in on him and making sure he’s fed. He’s so cute.” Or not. He couldn’t believe that parrot was so skilled at manipulating people into thinking he was adorable. They were all horribly misguided. They would think differently if they had to live with it. Still, it was good that someone was taking care of it for Poe, even though it should have been him and not Wexley. Poe would want to see BB-8 as soon as he opened his eyes.

 

“Do you want me to get Ranger Wexley? He can answer your questions.”

 

He did have a ton of them, mostly concerning Poe, and he wasn’t sure anyone else would be willing to give him a straight answer.

 

General Organa entered the room without even a knock and quickly approached them. “Finn, I’m glad you’re awake. The P.P.D.C. is having an emergency meeting, and they need all active Rangers present. I know you’re not ready to leave medical, but I need you to come with me.” She turned her attention to the girl. “Rey, I want you to come as well, but stay out of sight, and don’t say anything.”

 

So the General had not told the other members of the P.P.D.C about Rey and her abilities. He made his way out of the bed, pleased to find that everything was still in working condition. He should be able to go back to his own room soon. Then he could take care of BB-8.

 

He and Rey followed the General to the council room. Rey stayed in the doorway, out of sight of the unfamiliar faces on the vid screens. Pava and Wexley were sitting next to each other at a half circle table. Norra was there, but not Sinjir. He could feel the eyes of those strangers on the screens on him as the General lead him to his spot next to Ranger Wexley. The seat on the other side of him was left empty. It was meant for Poe. Poe was supposed to be seated next to him. He tore his gaze away from the empty chair to study the vid screens instead. Most of them held Rangers from the other Shatterdomes, people in more peaceful times he would have gotten to know better.

 

“If all active Rangers are accounted for, we can begin,” a pale man with reddish hair addressed them all. Finn looked again at the empty seat next to him, and clasped his hands on the table. “Most of you are aware by now that a second breach has opened in the Bering Sea.”

 

That caught his attention. A second rift meant more Kaiju. Perhaps more than they could actually deal with. Were they thinking of putting Norra back on active duty? Was that why she had been included? But who had been her copilot?

 

“We’re going to have to move strategic resources north to counter this new threat. Snap Testor will remain where they are in San Francisco. Guatemala will be shut down.”

 

They couldn’t shut down Guatemala. The Guatemala Shatterdome and her pilots had been pivotal in driving back the Kaiju during the Fourth Contact War. Without Guatemala, Earth would have fallen thirty years ago. They proposed to shut it down and erase all its history, pretend like it never existed. Guatemala was Poe’s home. What were they thinking, shutting it down?

 

Other Jaegars were listed as being reassigned, other small Shatterdomes were being closed. They hadn’t just singled out Guatemala.

 

He and Poe weren’t going anywhere. Renegade Nova hadn’t been mentioned at all. Maybe they didn’t expect them to fight. Maybe they thought Poe wouldn’t be able to pilot again, and since he was incompatible with most people, Renegade Nova might be on her way to the Graveyard.

 

“With a second breach, I believe we can all agree that we need more Rangers. We don’t exactly know what allows certain people to drift, but, regardless, the Kaiju have wreaked havoc on that particular gene pool.”

 

“What about the Academy?” General Organa asked, gesturing towards Finn. He was starting to regret coming to this meeting. “Can’t we convince Captain Phasma to start letting her cadets graduate early?”

 

“The Academy is a joke,” an older man said from the screen designated Anchorage. “It’s just a place rich people send their kids to play at war without actually putting them in danger.”

 

Was that how people on the outside really viewed the Academy? Maybe that was why Poe hadn’t taken him very seriously when they had first met.

 

“Some good Rangers come out of the Academy,” General Organa protested, “including Finnick.” She didn’t need to say the rest that they already knew. That a lot of the good Rangers never had the benefit of the Academy. Most of the heroes from the Fourth Contact War, Pava, Wexley, Poe… Rey. None of them had been at the Academy, and they had all done a much better job than he had.

 

“Except at the news of a second breach, two hundred and fifty seven cadets either dropped out or were pulled out by their parents.”

 

So even if they had the Jaegars, they still didn’t have enough people to pilot them They couldn’t fight this war without Rangers.

 

“General Organa, perhaps you would like to tell us about your new Rangers.”

 

“Renegade Nova was severely damaged during the last attack. Finnick is present at this meeting, and Poe is undergoing extensive medical treatment for a Kaiju bite.”

 

“Not Renegade Nova,” the General with the red hair said. “These Rangers.” He pressed a button and his screen changed to a news story being presented by a young woman.

 

“Renegade Nova and Snap Testor engaged the two Kaiju,” there was Renegade Nova, falling backward into the surf under the weight of the saber Kaiju, “but were soon joined by a previously unseen Jaegar many fans have taken to calling ‘Scavenger.’” The General turned off the footage just as Rey lifted her canon to the Kaiju’s head. If she hadn’t done that, what would have happened to Poe?

 

“Those Rangers, General Organa,” the man said with a scowl. “We know that Jaegar was taken back to your Shatterdome.”

 

“The cockpit was empty when we got it here,” General Organa said.

 

Finn was glad Rey was standing to his left, or else he might have looked at her and given away her existence.

 

“They must have ejected into the Pacific ocean on the journey here, General Hux.”

 

“That would be suicide.”

 

“So is illegally owning a Jaegar,” General Organa said with an air of finality, but General Hux was not satisfied.

 

“I refuse to believe it. Between the fall and the toxicity of the Kaiju blood in the water, no one would take that jump.”

 

The Kaiju blood. The inside of the cockpit had been covered in Kaiju blood, the vibrant blue covering everything. Rey had shot that Kaiju biting into them at point blank range. Was that why he had been kept in medical?

 

While General Organa and General Hux continued to argue about whether or not two people would be willing to make that jump, he leaned closer to Ranger Wexley. “Was I exposed to the Kaiju blood?” It might explain the nightmares, and why they seemed insistent on keeping him in one spot.

 

“No,” Ranger Wexley whispered back. “Your drivesuit should have been adequate protection.”

 

“Poe’s drivesuit was damaged.” And he had had an open wound on his shoulder. That was why no one had left an update for him on Poe’s condition.

 

“Yeah, it was.”

 

“I’m sorry, General Organa,” Hux said sarcastically, “but I think two of your Rangers have something they want to share with the rest of us.”

 

“He was concerned about his copilot,” Ranger Wexley said in his defense, “something your desk job would have taught you nothing about.”

 

“Enough!” General Pentecost commanded, and Hux remained silent even though he looked like he desperately had much more he wanted to say to Ranger Wexley. “I don’t want to hear anything else about mystery Jaegars. A lot of Rangers and their teams need to pack their things and say goodbye. You are all dismissed.”

 

General Pentecost cut his connection and one by one, the other Shatterdomes followed suit until only Anchorage remained.

 

“Leia, are you going to be alright with only Snap Testor operational?” the commander asked with a soft expression.

 

“I’ll be fine. Renegade Nova will be field ready again before you know it. It’s you I’m worried about.”

 

“Five additional Jaegars should help. Mirror Bright asked for a transfer but they were denied.”

 

“That’s a shame.”

 

“I requested the Hansen twins, but they refused. You know how they are.”

 

“Wedge, I applaud your efforts, but you will never get them out of Australia.”

 

“I’d just sleep a lot better if they were here with me in Anchorage.”

 

“You should get ready for your new Jaegars. Take care, Wedge.”

 

“Take care, Leia,” the commander said before he turned off his vid screen. They weren’t getting any new arrivals other than the two that were already there.

 

“The rest of you are dismissed. Temmin, can you escort Finn back to medical for me? And Finn, you should get in touch with your parents. Let them know you’re okay. No matter how old you get, parents will always worry about their children.”

 

Ranger Wexley took him back to medical, even though he was fairly certain he should be allowed to return to his room if there was nothing wrong with him other than his vision. Not that it would do much good. Between BB-8 and the lack of Poe, he doubted he would be able to get any sleep. Ranger Wexley left him at the door to his room with a phone and a number. Some conversations were better face to face, but he hadn’t been cleared to leave medical without explicit permission, let alone leave the Shatterdome.

 

He needed to make this phone call. General Organa was right about one thing for sure. Parents always worried about their children, no matter how old they got. He crawled back into the bed, and pulled his knees up towards his chest. He took a deep breath, and tried to think of something other than blue. He needed to keep his face composed when he made this call. He almost wished Sinjir would have come to visit him so he could have asked him to smuggle in something to give him an extra boost of courage.

 

He dialed the number Wexley had provided for him. Two, three rings. He should give up and call some other time. On the fourth ring, a man picked up.

 

At first, the resemblance struck him so hard that his heart dropped and words failed him. The General would have called him eventually, once they had more definitive information to give him. This was premature; he shouldn’t have called and all he could do was stare. It was the spitting image of what Poe would look like in about twenty years if he lived that long.

 

“Hello?” It took him a few moments to realize he was being spoken to. “Did you need me for something?”

 

“Yes, sir, sorry, sir,” he babbled as all his pent up words burst forth at once. “Ranger Dameron, sir. I’m Finn, Finnick, Poe’s copilot.”

 

“I know who you are,” Kes Dameron told him, and it was likely they only thing that would have gotten him to stop babbling. “Poe’s told me all about you.”

 

He didn’t know what to say to that. He hadn’t even spoken to his parents since he had left the Academy, let alone told them about Poe. Maybe Poe had been more pleased with their arrangement than he had let on. Ranger Dameron certainly wasn’t looking at him like he had ruined his son’s life. Not yet, anyway.

 

“Is this the call then?” Ranger Dameron asked, the moment he had been dreading.

 

“It might be,” he admitted. He still had hope that it wouldn’t be though, or else he would not have bothered to make this phone call. “I’m so sorry,” he apologized, blinking back the tears that threatened to overwhelm him. He wouldn’t give up on Poe; there might be some leftover connection between them that the was the only thing keeping him alive.

 

“Sorry? What for?” Ranger Dameron asked him.

 

“For bringing him back into this.” For very likely getting your son killed. For being such an anomaly that there was only one person in the world he could drift with.

 

“Listen, Finn,” Ranger Dameron said softly. “He was a Ranger, his mother and I piloted together, he knew exactly what he was getting into when he set foot inside that Jaegar. So when he gets better, and he will recover from this, I don’t want a phone call from him telling me that you’re still blaming yourself. He choose this life. He choose you. Understood?”

 

“Understood,” he said with a small nod.

 

“Besides, with this new Breach opening, he would have found some other way to get involved. No one could have kept him out of this war.”

 

“Thank you, sir.” He should have known that; he had been inside Poe’s head. He knew what fighting the Kaiju meant to him. It was just so easy to forget that when he wasn’t allowed to see Poe.

 

“And enough of with this ‘sir’. We’re practically family.”

 

~*~*~

 

They wouldn’t let him leave the medical ward without express permission from one of the superior officers, and he still was not allowed to see Poe, even though he asked every time one of the nurses came to check his vitals. He finally found the one place BB-8 was not allowed to go, and he almost wished the bird were there. It would remind him that Poe was still alive. Time started to blend together, and he didn’t know how long he had been stuck there. He started to suspect the drugs they were giving him had something to do with it. They were keeping him sedated so he wouldn’t tear the place apart.

 

The only thing that changed was the person who was seated next to him. Norra brought him reading material from the Fourth Contact War. Sinjir insisted on continuing his lessons on Jaegar maintenance. Rey talked to him about the machines and her life in the Graveyard.

 

Jess usually just watched tv with him, but kept him entertained with a running commentary about her favorite characters and actors. One of her favorites was a soap opera about Rangers called _As The Tide Ebbs_. He thought the plots were a little far fetched, but her enthusiasm grew on him. Ranger Wexley told him stories about the other Rangers he had known over the years, usually over a game of chess. The stories rarely involved Poe, like he didn’t want to make Finn worry, or on the rare occasion they did, he was never mentioned by name.

 

Norra was currently with him, telling him stories about Guatemala. He was deeply familiar with the history, but hearing it from someone who had actually lived through it was quite another experience. Yet Norra was one of the few who could give him permission to leave this tiny room with no windows.

 

“Norra, do you think I could so see Renegade Nova?” he asked her about ten minutes before she would be leaving him to be replaced by Jess. She stared at him like she was trying to figure out what he was really planning.

 

He wanted to stretch his legs. He wanted to know how the repairs were going on Renegade Nova. He wanted to see Poe above all else. To know that he was going to pull through. But since those last two were denied him, he would settle for the first two.

 

“Alright, but I don’t want you gone for more than an hour.”

 

“Yes, ma’am.”

 

“And I’m going with you.”

 

Of course she would be, which meant no unscheduled stops. So much for going back to the room. Even though he wasn’t sure why he wanted to go back. BB-8 would likely attack him on sight for not bringing Poe back, and everything he could possibly need was right here.

 

“Where are they keeping Poe?” he asked as they stepped out into the sterile hallway. Probably somewhere further in, closer to the operating room. The only information he had been able to get out of anyone was in was in a medically induced coma until all the surgeries were completed.

 

“Don’t make me regret this,” Norra said as she gently turned him towards the left.

 

“You don’t know, do you?” he asked as they continued walking, and she scoffed at him.

 

“They didn’t give any of us an exact room number so you couldn’t needle it out of us.”

 

“You aren’t visiting me for my company.” They wanted to keep him away from Poe, or at least distract him from thinking about him.

 

“We all volunteered because we care about you and Poe.”

 

He had left the Ranger Academy friendless and with Poe as his only meaningful companion. Now he had five people who barely knew him spending every waking second with him to make sure he didn’t do something stupid. People who cared enough about him that they didn’t want to see him go mad with grief and worry. Jess with the shows, Sinijr with the lessons. They were all trying to keep his mind occupied and healthy.

 

Sinjir was on the ground overseeing the repair work on Renegade Nova. Technicians were on ledges at three different levels, getting out the dents, replacing the paint. They hadn’t fixed the hole in the cockpit yet, but they had cleared it of the blood. He could see the shadows of people making internal repairs.

 

And there was Rey, clinging to the outside with a toolbelt around her waist and a welding torch in her hand. She had removed her boots and was clinging to the surface with her feet and one hand as she fixed a damaged seam. There was nothing below her but the unforgiving ground, and she wasn’t wearing any type of harness. Nothing was to stop her from falling to her death.

 

“Is that safe?” he asked Sinjir, pointing up to Rey. How was she even holding on up there?

 

“Absolutely not,” Sinjir informed him, and Norra spared him the trouble of glaring at him. “But she insists on helping, and I got tired of fighting with her.”

 

“How many times did you tell her to follow our safety procedures?” Norra asked him.

 

“Does it matter?”

 

Rey extinguished the torch, put it back in her belt, and swung. Finn took a step forward, knowing he would not be able to catch her. He only started breathing again when she gracefully attached herself to a lower level.

 

“She’s a natural with these machines.”

 

“How many times, Sinjir?”

 

“Once,” he admitted as Rey relit her torch and continued working. She didn’t seem to notice the other people making repairs to Renegade Nova, like it was just her and the Jaegar. “Can I borrow the Ranger for a moment?”

 

“For what?”

 

Sinjir might be more willing to let him take a side trip. He tried to keep his face neutral. Thank goodness Norra was on his left and couldn’t see his eyes.

 

“I just want to show him something.” Hopefully something far away from prying eyes. He would only need a few minutes to head back to the dorm, then he would head back to medical. With proof that he could handle being in that room on his own. They hadn’t drifted together that much. People were worrying about him over nothing when the person they should be worrying about was Poe. Not that worrying was going to fix anything.

 

“Fine,” Norra agreed, “but take him back to medical when you’re done. _‘As The Tide Ebbs_ ’ is about to start, and Ranger Pava will be cross if he’s late.

 

He had no intention of missing it, even though he still thought it was absurd.

 

“Right, field trip then straight back to medical. We wouldn’t want him wandering around unescorted, now would we?”

 

Sinjir led him away from Norra and Renegade Nova. He had been given free reign of the Shatterdome before. Why was it only now after he had actually fought the Kaiju that they wanted him under constant surveillance? Maybe it was because he had mentioned that third presence in the drift. Perhaps they wanted to give him a psych eval, but wanted to see what Poe had to say on the subject. Not that it mattered. Without Poe, Renegade Nova would be given to another set of Rangers, and he would never step foot inside a Jaegar again. Although with this second Rift opening, they would find something else for him to do instead of tossing him aside. He would continue to do it, even if it meant doing it without Poe.

 

Sinjir lead him into Hangar Four, where Rey’s Jaegar stood alone. As they took the elevator up, on the side opposite the arm from Black One, he had plenty of time to study her machine. Up close, it was apparent how many different Jaegars she had taken parts from, where one shade of gray abruptly became another then turned blue. That was just the patchwork parts he could see. No telling what she had done with the interior. She must have been working on it for years, living out there alone in the Graveyard.

 

The cockpit was from the Millennium Falcon, he would have been able to recognize that anywhere. That Jaegar and her pilots had played a major role in the last war. Han Solo had retired years ago, and no one was sure what had happened to his copilot. It was when his name had been mentioned that he had started to lose Poe. When the connection between them had started to fray.

 

“We can’t go in there,” he protested as Sinjir opened the hatch. “That’s Rey’s Jaegar.” Not to mention it had been her home for years, and he wouldn’t like it if someone invaded his space.

 

“All Jaegars belong to the P.P.D.C. This one more than most.” Sinjir ducked inside the cockpit, leaving Finn alone on the walkway. There was something about the Millennium Falcon that Poe didn’t like, and he didn’t want to go inside. He looked down at the gray water still against the ankles of Scavenger. It was a long way down, and the water wasn’t exactly deep. “Finnick, inside,” Sinjir called to him from the hatch.

 

Rey must have removed her personal belongings. She had mentioned they had provided her with her own room. He had almost told her not to accept it, that they wanted her for something, that she would regret it later. But for all he knew he was under constant surveillance on camera as well, so he had said nothing except for to congratulate her. She was a strong woman and could take care of herself should things start to go south for her.

 

“What did you want to show me?” This was a waste of time, trying to distract him from Poe. There was nothing in here of interest to him, nothing to differentiate from any of the other Jaegars.

 

“This,” Sinjir told him, indicating the equipment surrounding them. It looked similar to the interior of Renegade Nova, but none of the parts were exactly the same. “What this girl built is incredible. There are parts in here from every generation of Jaegars.”

 

“All but one,” he said, remembering the scolding Norra had given to Poe.

 

“I don’t know how she managed to get all these pieces to work together. I’m thinking of retiring and letting her oversee all maintenance.” She would be good at it. She probably knew more about older Jaegars than anyone else alive. Maybe she could fix the problems with the Mark Twenty-Fives so they could use them again. That would bring back a number of Jaegars that had been prematurely decommissioned.

 

“Now that I’ve shown you the Jaegar, I’m sure you want to check on that bird you like to pretend you dislike.”

 

~*~*~

 

Ranger Wexley was on duty when his visitors arrived. A few of the other Rangers had come to see him, to offer their condolences, always in pairs. None of them had come alone. None of them had been stopped by Ranger Pava just outside the closed door. He couldn’t really hear what was being said, but he could see some of it. Not well enough to see their insignia and know who they were. To know why they were not allowed to visit him when so many other people had been allowed in his room. He had met Rangers from Shatterdomes he had never known existed and had likely been closed down.

 

“Who are they?” he asked when he realized Jess had no intention of letting them in. Two girls, about the same height, with side braids hanging on opposite sides. He had a few guesses.

 

“Hansen twins,” Wexley told him only briefly looking up from his book at them. “Don’t worry. Jess will keep them away from you.”

 

He had heard so much about them, it was only fair that he should finally get to meet them. “Why shouldn’t they be allowed to see me?”

 

“They don’t want to offer you their sympathies. They want to gawk at you.” In sync, two heads swiveled towards him and stared at him with identical, unblinking eyes. He tried to shrink back against the hospital bed. It was like they could see straight into his soul and read all his thoughts. “By now most of the other Rangers know you piloted Renegade Nova solo.”

 

“If they’re going to gawk at me, could they not be so creepy about it?” He was almost grateful that Jess was out there running interference. They snapped their attention back to Jess so fast that he thought he may have been seeing double.

 

“No, that’s just how they are.”

 

“Because they spent too much time together in the Drift?”

 

“Perhaps. Unless you believe the story that they were conceived in the Drift?”

 

“That’s not possible.” People could share dreams together, dreams of all natures that he hadn’t had to deal with yet. But it was ridiculous to believe someone could conceive in a dream. Biological factors needed to be at play.

 

“To their parents it sounded better than their father cheated on his wife with his copilot.”

 

Yes, he could definitely see how someone might think that. Watching them walk away, every movement in perfect synch, he almost believed the story himself.

 

“They wouldn’t move out of Australia to save the world, but they’ll come up here to stare at you for two minutes.”

 

“They just want to protect their home,” he said as they walked away. He didn’t think Poe would have voluntarily left Guatemala either if he had still been stationed there. He would probably want to go back as soon as he woke up.

 

Two nurses came into view from the other direction, talking to Jess while gesturing into his room. He sat up further in the bed, trying to hear what they were saying. Something had happened.

 

“What’s going on?” he asked Wexley, even though he couldn’t know any more than he did. He had been sitting with him for the past three hours.

 

“Maybe someone fell working on one of the Jaegars.”

 

He didn’t think so. They wouldn’t need to point to him for that. Jess wouldn’t need to be involved. They wouldn’t need to hand Jess a clipboard and pen that she was carrying into the room. Ranger Wexley put his book on the table next to him.

 

“They need a signature for a procedure for Ranger Dameron,” she said, holding the clipboard close to her chest. “It needs to come from either the General or his copilot. And he’s closer.” She didn’t seem eager to relinquish the clipboard, nor did she offer any explanations as to what the procedure was.

 

“If it’s going to help Poe, I’ll sign it,” he offered, hoping it would prompt her to action. It obviously needed to be done soon, or they would have bypassed him and gone straight to the General.

 

“Let me see that,” Ranger Wexley said, extending his hand. Jess gave it over to him, too far away for him to intercept it.

 

Ranger Wexley looked over it, his face betraying nothing. What could they possibly want to do to him that was making Jess so uncomfortable?

 

“I’ll sign it,” Ranger Wexley said, extending his hand for the pen.

 

Jess hesitated and looked like she was about to protest.

 

“Was I or was I not his copilot?”

 

“You were,” she said, surrendering the pen. Ranger Wexley quickly signed the form and handed everything back to Jess. She took it back outside to hand to the nurses, then collapsed backwards against his door as the nurses rushed off.

 

“What did you sign?” he asked when Jess showed no signs of moving. She looked like she might end up being sick.

 

“Nothing you need to worry about.”

 

“Bullshit,” he growled. He had no business taking that decision away from him. Maybe he had been Poe’s copilot once, but he had given that title up a long time ago. He didn’t even need to be sitting in there with him.

 

“You said you would do anything if it would help him.”

 

“What did you sign?”

 

“This way if he survives we know that he’ll be able to use that arm again. He’ll definitely be able to pilot with you.” If he wanted to. He might just decide to walk away again. “If we didn’t do this, he would have died. The toxicity was too high.”

 

The Kaiju blood. He had been exposed. There had been so much of it. It had seeped into the open wounds on his arm and shoulder and infected his arm. His arm. The realization broken something down inside him. The walls he had built up to pretend that everything was going to be fine broke down faster than the Sydney wall during the first war. He lowered his head, not trusting himself to look at anything. He couldn’t bear to see the pity he was sure Ranger Wexley was feeling. This was his fault. He should have left him alone. His parents were right, he never should have been a Ranger.

 

As for Poe, well, Poe would never want anything to do with him again. He couldn’t blame him. He wouldn’t want to see himself either. How had this happened? They were supposed to make their mark on history together.

 

Poe didn’t even get to have a choice in the matter. He choked back a sob as his last defenses collapsed.

 

“Hey, you didn’t do this,” Ranger Wexley said, wrapping an arm around his shoulder. At the contact he couldn’t hold the tears back any longer. He curled into himself, not caring who saw him any longer. “I signed the form. You’re not responsible for this.”

 

No matter what Wexley said to comfort him, he couldn’t convince himself that he wasn’t to blame.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I just wanted everyone to know that this was not an easy decision to make, and that there are brighter times ahead.


	8. A New Partner

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Finn continues to deal with the repercussions of the last battle with Renegade Nova.

Ranger Wexley had stopped coming to visit him. Ranger Pava seemed reluctant to get in the middle. That suited him just fine. It had not been Wexley’s decision to make for anyone, and every time Finn saw him, he was reminded of what he had done, the choice he had taken away fro him. Ranger Pava had at first seemed to want to mend the rift between them, but she had ultimately given up and just resumed watching her show with him. He didn’t have to wait much longer, alone in that cold little room with its barren walls and a door that was always shut tight. He was finally free to leave, to go back to his dorm, but first he had finally been given permission to visit Poe. He followed the nurse down a white hallway lit by lights so bright they blinded him as he struggled to keep up with her.

 

His mother had been an Admiral during the last war. When the Kaiju had been driven back, she, among many others, insisted that the Kaiju would come back. She had stood before the P.P.D.C and told them they needed to divert funds away from the Jaegars. That they needed to come up with a more permanent solution. That continuing to throw money at the Jaegar program was only going to get more pilots killed. That they would eventually run out of pilots.

 

It was also why he had been strictly forbidden him to join the Ranger academy. She insisted the Jaegar program would fail. She had seen the horrors of war and wanted no part of that for her son. Maybe he should have listened. Maybe he should have stayed safe on the Atlantic coast.

 

Dr. Kalonia was in the room when they finally arrived, looking over some charts on the other side of the bed. They had covered Poe with one of those thin, scratchy hospital blankets pulled up to his chin. He couldn’t see the result of their surgery, but he could see the hollow spot here his arm should have been. They hadn’t shaved him since he had arrived in medical. They should do it now before he woke up. To make at least something seem normal.

 

“Finn, how are you feeling?” Dr. Kalonia asked as she moved around to his side of the bed.

 

“I’m fine,” he said, unmoving. He should have been released from medical days ago. Had it really only been two weeks since he and Poe had piloted Renegade Nova together? Two weeks since everything had gone to hell.

 

“Remember if that ever changes you can always come back for further evaluations.”

 

He could feel her eyes studying him, checking to see if he should really be allowed to return to his own room.

 

“How much longer will Poe be in here?” He needed his copilot, now more than ever.

 

“It’s hard to be sure.” Not the answer he wanted to hear. “We need to attach the prosthetic and he’ll have to get used to it before he even thinks about piloting again.” If he even wanted to pilot again. “Prosthetic have come a long way, Ranger Sloane. We use the same technology that they use to build the Jaegars. He’ll never even know the difference.”

 

Yes, he would. They would all know. Nothing would ever change the fact that Poe had lost his arm to the Kaiju.

 

“Finn, we’re doing absolutely everything we can for Poe.” Maybe now because they needed Rangers. The P.P.D.C had failed Poe before. They hadn’t done everything they could for Poe; they had done everything they could to ensure that Poe would be able to pilot again. He hadn’t been in there to see him before they decided his arm posed too much of a risk. Had he really been in danger of dying from infection or had his arm just been so far damaged they had worried it wouldn’t work the same?

 

He couldn’t do anything for Poe now, not until he was conscious again. Then they would have a hard time getting him out of that room short of a Kaiju attack.

 

“Finn, what are you thinking?” To a certain extent, perhaps the doctor really was worried about him. The psychological strain piloting a Jaegar put on someone was nearly as great as the physical one. Were he to break before Poe recovered, it wouldn’t matter what they had done to Poe’s arm.

 

“That Poe didn’t chose this.”

 

He left before she could make any more inquiries and retreated back to the room he had been banned from for so long. Everything was exactly the same as it had been when they had left that morning, except someone had been cleaning up after BB-8. Poe’s Black One jacket was still hanging off the bottom corner of the top bunk. The metal hallways of the Shatterdome could get cold.

 

BB-8 was on his perch and squawked at him when he came in. The bird seemed to have its own scream just to greet him.

 

“Good to see you too.”

 

Poe would be glad that someone had been taking care of BB-8. He remembered Rey telling him it had been Ranger Wexley. Well, he didn’t need to watch BB-8 anymore now that he had been released from medical.

 

He reached his hand out to BB-8 the way he had seen Poe do hundreds of times. BB-8 pecked at his hand, scoring a gash along the back of his hand. He yelled as he recoiled, and BB-8 flapped his wings.

 

“Stupid bird.”

 

“Poe!” BB-8 squawked with outstretched wings. “Poe! Poe!”

 

“He’s not coming back. Poe’s gone.”

 

BB-8 continued to call frantically for his missing owner. He couldn’t get him to be quiet, and the calls just reinstated the fact that Poe was not there. Poe might never be coming back. They had no guarantees that he was going to pull through.

 

With a sob, he sank down to the floor in front of the bunk. It hadn’t just been him in that Jaegar. Rangers were not meant to outlive their copilots.

 

Something bumped the back of his head. The room had gone eerily quiet during his breakdown, and bleary-eyed, he realized BB-8 was no longer on his perch. Had he left the door open when he had returned? The bump against his skull came again. BB-8 had flown to the bed and was behind him. Talons pulling on the blanket, BB-8 repositioned himself and nudged the side of his head. He was trying to nuzzle up against him like he so frequently did with Poe.

 

He kept himself perfectly still, holding back a fresh round of tears. BB-8 nuzzled against him, keeping the top of his head pushed just above his right ear.

 

“Poe,” BB-8 said again in a much quieter voice in a manner that reminded him of how a mother should comfort her child. He sat on the cold floor, BB-8 nuzzling up against the back of his head, and wondered if Poe would ever get to see his bird again.

 

~*~*~

 

He fell into a new pattern the next couple of days; the monotony kept him from thinking too much about Poe. Kept him from going to medical every hour to see how Poe was doing, see if he was awake yet. Breakfast, lunch, dinner. Rey usually joined him for two out of three or all. He asked her how she was adjusting to life in the Shatterdome, what she did with her spare time. She continued working on the Jaegar repairs; Renegade Nova should be operational again within a week. He avoided Ranger Wexley when he could. He joined Jess in the common room daily for reruns on their soap opera, sometimes watching three or four episodes a day if their schedules permitted it. She picked some of her favorite episodes for him to catch up on.

 

His repetitive schedule made it easy for General Organa to find him, sitting on the sofa in the common room with Jess.

 

“Ranger Sloane,” she said as she stepped into the room. She had never used his last name like that before. “You haven’t been attending your training sessions. Did you not get your updated schedule?”

 

He hadn’t, although he had seen a piece of paper on the desk in his room that he had not bothered to look at too closely before he had used it as lining on BB-8’s perch. It hadn’t seemed important at the time, and it probably still wasn’t.

 

“I don’t have a copilot,” he pointed out. Sure, he could probably do some light training to keep in shape, but he definitely didn’t need to be going every day like he had been.

 

“Make sure you come to the Kwoon at fourteen hundred hours this afternoon,” she commanded before she left the room. Jess didn’t seem to know why the General was so insistent on him getting back to training either. At least, she didn’t offer any explanations, and he didn’t ask her either. Besides, there was no reason he should have to go to the Kwoon for training. Not unless they had magically pulled a new Drift partner for him.

 

~*~*~

 

He was twenty minutes late reporting to the Kwoon, and the General stood on the edge of the mat looking disappointed in the world. Or most likely she was disappointed in him for being late.

 

The bigger surprise, however, was Rey, standing at the far edge of the mat. She had changed into a set of clothes clearly provided by the Shatterdome and was holding one of the staffs as if she were very familiar with the weapon. Not that he would have to worry about that, but if they upgraded her Jaegar, the Kaiju should beware.

 

“Finn, grab a staff,” the General ordered. He could hear in her restraint that she was dying to scold him. Probably taking it easy on him because of how long he had been in medical and everything that was going on with Poe. “I want you to spar with Rey.”

 

“I don’t think that’s a good idea.” For one thing, he was sure she would pummel him into the ground because he wasn’t sure he was willing to fight her just because the General told him to.

 

“We have reason to believe you and Rey are drift compatible.”

 

That was impossible. His scans had been tested against everyone else in the program, and Poe was the only decent match they found for him. Hundreds of other applicants had been scanned. Except Rey had been living in the graveyard and had just now been added to the database. Was it possible that there was a second person out there he was drift compatible with?

 

He walked stiffly over to the rack and pulled out a staff he thought he would be comfortable with. He hadn’t been prepared for this. He had thought his days at testing were over. Rey had not had the years of experience he had, but he was sure life in the wasteland had served her well enough. He stood across from her on the mat, gripping the staff tightly while she kept her hands loose.

 

“You may begin when ready,” the General said, holding her clipboard to her chest.

 

“I’m very sorry about this,” Rey told him quietly before moving in to attack.

 

She was fast, faster than he had anticipated. He found it hard just to dodge her attacks, let alone fight back against her.

 

She swept his legs out from under him, knocking the wind out of him as he landed flat on his back. Rey stood above him, a fiery gleam in her eye as she held the edge of her staff at his throat. Perhaps he was lucky she had not killed him.

 

“One-zero,” the General informed them, making a check on her clipboard.

 

“Are you okay?” Rey asked as she pulled her staff away and extended her hand to him.

 

“Yeah, I’m fine,” he said as memories of another test gnawed at the edges of his thoughts, demanding his attention. She helped him to his feet before reverting into a battle ready stance. He needed to concentrate on the battle going on now. If he could prove to be drift compatible with Rey, he could fight with her until such a time Poe was willing or able to join him in Renegade Nova.

 

He could do this. He had battled candidates many times before. Besides, if they failed, at least he was used to that sting. He stepped forward, swinging the staff with his movements. She blocked his attack easily, a small smirk playing at the corner of her mouth. She had been practicing, probably with either Norra or one of the other two Rangers. Jess could probably give her a run for her money.

 

Attack. Defend. Counterattack. Dodge. It was like a dance, really. A fast, dangerous dance that could end with one of them being hurt. She was faster than he was used to, and he was soon sweating from the effort of trying to keep up with her. She hardly seemed to be exerting any effort at all, moving as gracefully as the wind dancing across the sand. The rhythmic thunk of the wood drowned out everything else until it was just him, Rey, and their dance.

 

“Enough,” the General ordered, and they stepped away from each other. She looked exuberant, which was odd since she didn’t need a copilot. Maybe they had offered her something else as well, like a permanent place to stay. A place she could call home. “Rey, you will be copiloting Renegade Nova with Finn.”

 

“What about Poe?” he asked her, because he didn’t think that decision should be made without his consent.

 

“I cannot make that decision for Poe,” General Organa told them. “When he recovers, he is more than welcome to rejoin you inside Renegade Nova if that is his desire.”

 

~*~*~

 

One of the nurses had come when he was sitting in the common room with Jess and Rey to tell him Poe was awake and had been asking for him. He excused himself from the girls, left them to watch the show without him, and had practically sprinted to the medical ward. Or tried to until one of the medics told him to slow down. There could be a number of reasons why Poe might want to see him. He might be concerned about him after what had happened during their last battle together. To make sure he was still alive after they had been disconnected. Or he could want to tell him that he planned on retiring again. Or at least that he would prefer to drift with someone else.

 

It was the last reason that made him hesitate outside the door. He could continue to pilot Renegade Nova with Rey, or perhaps the two of them could transfer over to Scavenger. So why did it feel like he would be turning his back on Poe for even entertaining the notion of permanently replacing him with Rey? Standing out in the hallway wasn’t going to give him any answers, and he had been waiting for weeks to talk to Poe. To apologize to him for everything.

 

He took a deep breath and stepped quietly into the room. They had raised the back of his bed so he could sit up, his left hand lying motionless on the blanket next to him. If he hadn’t known, he probably wouldn’t have been able to tell the difference. He had gotten a shave since the last time Finn had gone to see him and was much more like his old self. Like the retired Ranger who had given him a chance and had become his copilot. Poe turned his head to look at him and somehow managed to smile through the weariness.

 

“Finn, buddy, how’re you doing?”

 

All the words he had been thinking over abandoned him. None of it seemed to matter anymore. Poe was alive, and that was more important than anything else. He dropped down onto the bed next to Poe and threw his arms around his shoulders and rested his forehead against the side of Poe’s head. Poe’s right hand came up to pat his arm.

 

“Listen, I’m glad you’re happy to see me, but if this keeps up, I’m going to think I’m still dreaming or that I’ve died and gone to Heaven.”

 

He pulled slowly away from Poe, but he kept himself seated on the bed, one hand remaining on Poe’s shoulder. It would be so easy to wind his fingers through Poe’s dark curls, to reassure himself that Poe was alive and sitting next to him. Poe gave him a weak smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes. He had a healed over cut underneath his right eye, just under where his lashes played along his skin. He was so close, he swore he could feel his breath. Poe turned away first, looking across his hospital room with a soft sigh.

 

“Poe, I’m so sorry,” he said, unsure if he was apologizing for the moment that had passed them by or something that had gone before. He must have been imagining that moment before.

 

“For what?” Poe asked and he didn’t know how to answer him. “For this?” He held up his left hand and one by one slowly flexed his fingers. “I’ll get used to this.” He had survived, and in the long run, it must have felt more important than an arm. He didn’t seem to be having trouble with basic motor functions, but it would take him a while to fully adjust. “Don’t lose any sleep over this, buddy.” He already had, over that and if Poe was even going to survive.

 

“It’s been BB-8 keeping me awake,” he joked even though the bird had grown complacent with him being the only one in the room at night. “I wanted to bring him to stay with you, but Dr. Kalonia wouldn’t let me.” He had the feeling seeing BB-8 could only improve Poe’s health. If he thought he could get away with it, he would have brought the bird in there for at least a brief visit. Even the mention of his companion seemed to cheer him.

 

“I’m sure you’ve been taking good care of him for me.”

 

They actually had a real breakthrough after the first night together. Almost as if their mutual distress over Poe’s absence had bonded them. At least the bird had stopped trying to peck at him, even though he was positive it cursed at him regularly in Spanish.

 

“Poe, they have me piloting Renegade Nova with Rey.” It wasn’t worth the effort to try to hide it from him, and it was better heard from him than gossip. Poe’s head tilted in confusion.

 

“Who’s Rey?”

 

“She saved us. She saved you,” he started as if that could somehow soften the blow. “She was the girl piloting the mystery Jaegar. Well, she’s not a girl, she’s nineteen. She’s been living in the Graveyard. She has parts from Black One and...” He trailed off, realizing he was rambling in Poe’s silence. If only he would say something, congratulate him on finding a new copilot or berate him for even thinking about replacing him when he would be able to pilot again. But this silence, this silence was more daunting than the wall Poe had placed between them the first time they had tried to drift together. The silence was an invisible barrier between them that he had no clue how to breach. Poe had never shut him out so completely before.

 

“You replaced me with a nineteen year old girl?”

 

He had done the exact same thing Ranger Wexley had done. Jessika would have been around nineteen when she had replaced Poe the first time.

 

“Poe, it’s not like that,” he tried to explain. “There’s a second breach now. I couldn’t sit around and do nothing while you were healing.”

 

That was the wrong thing to say and he could see the barrier building up stronger than before in the way Poe clenched his jaw. Maybe no one else had told him about the second rift and it just felt like an excuse to get him out of the cockpit.

 

“Poe, I don’t want to replace you,” he said, as Poe turned his face away from him. “Renegade Nova is your Jaegar as much as mine.” He reached between them to grab Poe’s new hand, giving it a gentle squeeze. “Just concentrate on healing so you can pilot her again with me, okay?” he begged as he dropped his forehead to Poe’s shoulder.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> When I posted the last chapter, I briefly contemplated posting a notice about a three month hiatus as a joke. My joke unfortunately became my own shameful reality.
> 
> I apologize for the long delay. I've been dealing with some personal issues that impacted my time to write.


	9. A New Perspective

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Poe gets a lot of visitors while he's recovering from the Kaiju attack, and has a lot of time to think about the past and his future as a copilot of Renegade Nova.

He hadn’t really lied to Finn. He could get used to the new arm, with time and a little bit of practice. Maybe a lot of practice. If he thought about it too hard, he found he couldn’t move it at all. It was hard not to think about it. It didn’t feel like his arm. Dr. Kalonia gave him exercises to help him with that, but it was difficult to even think about them.

 

Not that there was much else for him to do. He had a preapproved reading list of five books that sat untouched on a stand next to the bed. He had studied their spines at least a dozen times, trying to decide who the hell had put together that list. One was a tie-in novel to that awful soap opera about the rangers. Another was a detailed history about the First Contact War. This third was a sappy romance title about a “fiery young woman who found true love with a scoundrel.” There was a work of classic Guatemalan literature that he may have thought about reading had he not already read it half a dozen times over the course of his life. The last was an operations manual for the Jaegars. Like he was actually going to forget how to pilot while was trapped inside that unbearable medical room. They wouldn’t even let him have a TV. Said the stress from current events could be too much for his body to handle while he was still recovering.

 

As if they had any notion of the stress he had endured.

 

So he spent the days locked (he had checked the door when he was strong enough to get out of the bed) in the small room, doing his arm and hand exercises. He was trapped in there with nothing but his own thoughts for company. If they had known what that entailed, they probably would have given him the TV.

 

Finn came by to see him frequently, probably as often as his schedule and the Kaiju would allow. Finn still felt guilty; he could see it in the way he couldn’t maintain eye contact with him for long, whether it was the arm or the girl he had replaced him with that gnawed away at him, he couldn’t say for sure. He reassured him about the arm as frequently as he could, showing him the progress he had made with the exercises. The girl he couldn’t forgive him for, not yet. Now when Finn knew Temmin had done the same thing. Not when he had known how much that had hurt the first time and repeated it anyway.

 

At least when Finn was there, he had some distraction. Something to keep him occupied so that the thoughts that plagued him could not take over. To overthrow what reason he had left. Finn couldn’t be there all the time, though. He had to sleep, in his own bed. Dr. Kalonia insisted, for both their benefits. Finn had to train. He had to fight the Kaiju. The sirens echoed even down into the medical ward. He had heard it go off four times while he had been trapped there.

 

No one brought him any news. He had no idea where those Kaiju had gone to land or if Finn had been called to battle. Every time the sirens wailed, he sat on the bed and stared at the door until Finn walked through. He must have gone to battle at least once since the one time he had come to visit him with fresh stitches in his arm. He supposed he might have to thank Rey for helping to keep him alive.

 

The nights were the worst, that eight hour stretch where he was watched primarily by machines and one nurse who would come to check on him exactly four hours in. It was during the night that memories he thought long buried resurfaced, burrowing out of his brain. Drifting with Finn must have pulled it out of his subconscious, forcing him to relive those twelve days he would much rather forget. It was enough to drive a man to drink but he wasn’t allowed alcohol either. He wasn’t allowed a lot of things.

 

“Poe, it’s good to see you’re getting better,” General Organa said when she finally came to visit him. She sat down on the chair next to his bed, studying him carefully.

 

“General.”

 

“I’m not here as your General, Poe, I’m here as your friend.” He had heard that line before. Made the mistake of believing it too. “I wanted to come see you sooner, but I’ve been rather busy. I suppose you’ve heard about the second breach?”

 

“Finn told me,” he said, but he refused to divulge what else Finn had told him. The General did not manipulate people. But she certainly used what she knew about people to her advantage. “What did the First Order have to say about it? I’m sure they televised something as soon as they found out.”

 

“Before we had time to create a press conference. But I didn’t come here to talk to you about the First Order.”

 

That was surprising. She was always pumping him for information about the First Order, always pushing for that last tidbit of information that she thought he might be forgetting about.

 

“Bullshit.” They rarely talked about anything else. “What did they have to say about it?”

 

“The usual. That the second breach is a sign of the superiority off the Kaiju. That _Renegade Nova_ fell because the Jaegars cannot protect the world.” There was something else she was holding back, something that she didn’t want him to know. He knew that stance well. “But it doesn’t matter what they say. I came here to see how you’re doing.”

 

“I’ve been better,” he said because some times you had to pick and choose your lies. Some truths were easier to face than others. “I had a hole in my shoulder, Kaiju blood in my veins, and I lost my arm. On the plus side, they gave me a new arm and Finn comes to visit me everyday. Although that last part makes me feel like I may died inside that Jaegar after all.”

 

General Organa gave him a conspiratorial smile. “Finn does care about you, you know.” Of course he did. What Ranger could possibly drift with someone and not care about them to a certain extent? But Finn had obviously not cared about him enough not to replace him. “And I think he feels guilty.”

 

“About which part?” he asked, thinking there was a list of things. Making him think he could pilot again, that he could be a Ranger again and make a difference only to throw him away the first time someone less broken came along? Somebody it had apparently not been a struggle to drift with since they had already been out against the Kaiju.

 

“Poe, I demanded he test with Rey for drift compatibility. With the second breach we couldn’t afford to be short a Jaegar, and Wexley and Pava can’t hold the Shatterdome together on their own.”

 

“What happens to me?” he asked her. They had taken his arm to ensure he would be able to pilot again, and for the information the General thought he had. He knew that better than anyone. “I don’t think the P.P.D.C. gave me this new arm so I could quietly retire.”

 

“No, of course not,” she said, reaching over to pat him gently on the hand. “You wouldn’t be comfortable with that; we all know it. As soon as Dr. Kalonia gives us the all clear, you’ll be back in the cockpit with Finn.”

 

“And if I refuse?” He wouldn’t, of course. He couldn’t, not with this additional threat. He couldn’t live with himself if he turned his back on everyone now.

 

“Then we’ll find someone else if that’s what you want.” She gave his hand a gentle squeeze before she stood up. “But remember, Poe, Finn wasn’t the only one who had trouble drifting.”

 

She left him with that vague threat, that while he might have been Finn’s last chance at a drift partner, he had lost his capacity to drift before Finn had made his way past his walls. It used to be so easy, back before he had taken that damned special mission from the General. He clenched the fist of his left hand. He wouldn’t think about it, not now. Now when he was going to spend an indeterminate amount of time stuck in that room by himself. Time enough to think, which was the one thing that he shouldn’t have been doing.

 

~*~*~

 

It was a few days later before Temmin came to visit him. He had known it would be coming. Through Finn, he knew _Snap Testor_ had been transferred to San Francisco with them. Which meant when he finally got out of that damnable hospital room, seeing Temmin would be unavoidable. As would be seeing his new copilot, so he might as well get used to the idea now. Seeing Temmin on his own now might help him ease into it when it came time to see him with Ranger Pava later. At least Finn had given him warning that Temmin was coming so he had time to brace himself. Barring that brief interaction in the Jaegars, he hadn’t seen Temmin since, well, since he had left Guatemala.

 

“Poe, it’s great to see you again,” Temmin said when he stepped into the room, and surprisingly it was. Temmin clasped his hand in a firm handshake, yanking him in close and clapping him on the back. It was almost as if the last few years of separation and isolation had never happened.

 

“Good to see you, too, Snap,” he said as he was released. He had never known why Temmin had decided to incorporate that nickname into his next Jaegar. For a while, he thought maybe it had been done to spite him, but he should have known better than that.

 

Snap sat down in the seat next to the bed, and it was so weird to be thinking about him like a partner again when he had spent so much time trying to forget about it. He supposed that now that they were serving the same Shatterdome, they were partners again, even if it was not in the same sense.

 

“Finn tells me the doctor gave you some exercises for your arm,” Snap said after he had made himself comfortable.

 

“You were asking about me?” he asked, but of course he had been. The decision for the two of them to part ways had been a mutual one, but with Snap picking up Pava so quickly it was a break that had not closed properly and had started to fester. It had been easier by far to pretend that Snap no longer cared than to contemplate the alternative, that perhaps maybe Snap cared too much. That maybe he hadn’t put the name in the new Jaegar to spite him, but rather to honor the years they had spent together inside _Black One._

 

“Well, I’ve been worried about you for one.” And too afraid to come himself because of how they had ended things the last time. “And also I was the one who signed the release for your operation. I figured if you still hated me, you didn’t need to be upset with your new copilot as well.”

 

He should have told him that he never hated him, but maybe he had for just a little bit. So instead, “Finn replaced me too.”

 

“Temporarily,” Snap informed him. “And under entirely different circumstances.” They kept telling him it was only going to be until he recovered, but what if in the meantime Finn decided he preferred fighting with someone who could actually drift. It would have to be tempting for someone who was so dedicated to fighting the Kaiju.

 

“She wants to meet you,” Snap informed him.

 

“Which one?” The last he checked there had been two women who had replaced him.

 

“Both, probably,” Snap admitted, “but Jess keeps asking me about it almost every day.”

 

He didn’t know what to say to that. He was sure he would get along with her just fine, given that they did have the one very major thing in common. But the first and last time he had seen her, she had been replacing him. He had spent weeks watching her train with Snap, watching her prepare to take his place while their best researchers had put him through numerous tests and scans to see why he was no longer drifting the way he once had. Not that they would be able to find anything and he eventually just left rather than deal with it any longer.

 

“Come on,” Snap said, clapping him lightly on the arm. “She’s been living with the ghost of you for five years. It’s only fair that she finally gets the chance to meet you.”

 

“Yeah,” he said absently, “but not until after I’m out of here.” The lease they could do was let him keep his dignity when he met the girl who replaced him.

 

~*~*~

 

General Organa sighed as she leaned back in her office chair, the video clip of the latest First Order broadcast playing on endless repeat in front of her. The best analysts the P.P.D.C could provide for them couldn’t get any information about the broadcast; her human eyes could detect even less. Yet still she persisted, because it certainly beat studying breach activity or trying to find new Rangers on wondering how long they could last with only two Jaegars to defend them or calculating how long Commander Antilles could hold out so close to the new breach, even with the additional support. Luke would have known what to do, but their resources were spread too thin and she hadn’t seen Luke in years.

 

The First Order broadcast started over again, the masked figure telling her the same things she had already heard a hundred times over. They had been unable to alter the voice distortion to give her a positive identity on the speaker. They couldn’t even tell her where the broadcast had been filmed or where they had sent their signals from. They weren’t exactly the most useful bunch. She could have told them who the speaker was if she really cared to, but that didn’t help her find their location.

 

Poe had gotten the closest. Poe may have gotten too close. He had never been the same since he had come back from that assignment, and it wasn’t just the inability to drift. The drive was still there, he still wanted to protect people, but something else had come back with him, something that haunted. Something that Finn may have touched upon during their last drift. A third presence in there with them.

 

“General Organa?” Finn said from behind her and she shut the video down and spun the chair around to face him. “I’m sorry, but I knocked and you didn’t answer so I was worried about you.” He was wearing a _Black One_ jacket and she made a mental note to check to see if someone had taken care of the _Renegade Nova_ jackets yet. There had been so many other things to think about, she had forgotten to make sure her Rangers looked like Rangers. Maintaining appearances would go along way to bolstering public opinion of them.

 

“It’s okay. I just have a lot on my mind.” Kaiju, the First Order, where in the hell they were going to find more Rangers...

 

“The First Order?” Finn asked, gesturing to the now blank screen behind her.

 

“I don’t know what you’ve heard,” she started, because she had heard the rumors herself, that she was more interested in the First Order than the lives of her Rangers.

 

“I want in,” Finn cut her off before she could give him her well-rehearsed speech about how the First Order was a threat that needed to be dealt with sooner rather than later.

 

“You – what?” People didn’t usually come to her; she usually recruited them from trusted allies.

 

“I want to help. In any way you need me to.”

 

“Why would you want to do that?” She knew her reasons for fighting, but Finn’s would not be the same. “You understand that the First Order is dangerous, and I can’t guarantee your safety?”

 

“You can’t guarantee my safety in a Jaegar either.”

 

She didn’t know if that referred to the inherent dangers of the job or the security breach in the Mark Twenty Sevens, but she didn’t push the issue.

 

“I still need to know why if I’m going to include you in this.”

 

“Because of what they did to Poe.”

 

“And what exactly did they do to Poe?” If they had crafted some technology that destroyed their Rangers ability to drift, they needed to know about it so they could counter it. But they had never discovered if Poe’s inability to drift upon his return had been biological, psychological or a mixture of both.

 

“Enough,” Finn said with a small shrug. Either he didn’t know, or he wasn’t going to tell her, which was vexing because she couldn’t figure out which it was. It was the same way with Poe whenever she had gone to question him. “So are you going to let me help out?”

 

“Alright,” she consented. “I’ll tell you what I know.” Or at least the pertinent bits Finn would need to know in order to help her.

 

~*~*~

 

He was still confined to that room, and he was starting to miss sunlight, and there were nights he would have definitely preferred to have BB-8 there, but he was free to walk about the room as much as he wanted. Or as much as he was able as the case might be, which turned out to be not far at all at first. Still, he needed to keep on it. Norra had already been by to tell him she would be willing to give him personal training sessions to get Jaegar ready as soon as Dr. Kalonia gave him the all clear.

 

The door opened while his back was towards it, but these days he got so many of the same visitors that he didn’t even turn around to see who it was. They could make themselves comfortable until he was ready to come back that way.

 

“Poe!” a voice he hadn’t heard in a long time called, and as he turned around, someone was flinging themselves at him. He didn’t know how he managed to catch her and not fall over, but she was probably holding him up as she was squeezing him just a little too tightly. “I’m so glad you’re okay,” she said with her chin on his shoulder and he awkwardly reached up to return the hug with the hand that was still his. He patted her lightly between the shoulder blades.

 

“Karé,” he managed to wheeze out, “Karé, I can’t breathe.”

 

“Sorry, sorry,” she said as she pulled away from him but she still kept both her hands on his shoulders. “It’s just Snap said the Kaiju had breached _Renegade Nova’_ s hull and you had been bit and you lost your arm...” she trailed off for a moment, looking down at his arms. “I half expected to come here and find a vegetable.”

 

“I’m not a vegetable,” he assured her reaching up to place his hands over hers. “Though I’ve been in this room so long I might actually grow roots.”

 

“I’m sure you’ll be wandering the Shatterdome again soon,” she said as he released her hands and she let hers fall to her sides. She didn’t seem to have noticed which arm was new, even if he was reminded of it every time it didn’t respond the way he thought it should. He needed to sit down for a little by now anyway, and he made his way over to sit on the edge of the bed. Karé sat down next to him, the bag slung over her shoulder the only thing between them. “I brought you something,” she said, fishing around in the bag.

 

She handed him two little statues about six inches high. Bobbleheads from the Shatterdome gift shop. In his right hand, his father. In his left hand, a stunning likeness of his mother. He remembered walking by them the first day he had been a Ranger, wondering if anyone would remember him that way in the distant future.

 

“With the Shatterdome closing, I figured no one would miss them anyway, so I snagged them.”

 

“You stole them.” It wasn’t a question; they had been ridiculously overpriced which was why they had stayed there so long in the first place. Like the proprietor had been unwilling to part with them.

 

“They belong with you anyway,” Karé insisted, like she had been wounded by his comment. “Besides, they’ve decided to turn the Shatterdome into a museum. Within six months, there will be hundreds of inferior knock offs lining the shelves of the new tourist trap.”

 

“Thank you, Karé,” he said as he put them carefully next to the stack of books on the end table. What would BB-8 make of them?

 

“Can you believe they’re turning our home into a museum?” she lamented beside him. He almost pointed out to her that it was historically significant and it was better to turn it into a museum than to let it decay, but that wasn’t what she wanted to hear. She likely had not yet been granted the time to accept the decision like he had.

 

“Where are you going to go?”

 

“I know I can fly air support anywhere, but I put in a request to be transferred here. I’m already familiar with _Snap Testor’s_ crew.”

 

“And Snap is here,” he pointed out since she didn’t seem to be mentioning it anytime soon. Like he wouldn’t be able to figure that out. He had only spent years in Snap’s head. He was just glad they had waited til after he was gone.

 

“I met your new copilot on my way here,” she said quickly. “He’s pretty cute, huh?”

 

“Feeling a little greedy, are you?” he teased, bumping against her shoulder.

 

“Please, I wouldn’t even try. You should have seen his face light up when I mentioned I was your friend.”

 

“It’s not like that,” he said quickly before she could get any ideas. Even if he would concede that Finn was attractive, which he was but he had to keep a damper on that before it ruined their working relationship, nothing was going to come out of it. Finn had given him no indication of being interested in men, let alone old Rangers who could barely keep their shit together.

 

“If you say so,” she said with a small shrug of her shoulders. She didn’t believe him. He wasn’t even sure he believed himself.

 

“Karé, you would have made a great Ranger.” She had applied when they were younger, they had thought about joining together. Maybe they had hoped they would have been drift compatible. But she had lacked that necessary component that would have enabled her to drift. That hadn’t stopped her from joining up.

 

“Thanks, but I’m okay with being one hell of a pilot.”

 

~*~*~

 

It felt like someone was watching him. That was fine. He had spent the last several years with that feeling nagging at him. As he had been sleeping, he wasn’t all that surprised that the feeling was stronger. It usually was when he dreamed. He and Finn had not drifted enough together yet for them to be sharing dreams, though he wasn’t sure if that would help him or not. Someone was definitely in the room with him, which wasn’t too odd considering the number of visitors he had been having and the nurses who came to check up on him. He slowly blinked his eyes open, unwilling to let go of the first dreamless sleep he had had in a while, but he was also curious as to who was in his room with him. The nurses usually be bustling about the room and almost everybody else would have left if they would have seen he was sleeping. Which left very little people that it could actually be.

 

It was definitely no one he had been expecting. “Dad?” he said as he slowly sat up in the bed. His dad shouldn’t even be in the Shatterdome, he should have been still in Guatemala. Preferably he would have been somewhere on the other side of the Atlantic, but he knew his dad would never leave his home and he would never ask him to. With mom not around anymore, he really wouldn’t ask him to go anywhere. “What are you doing here?” Stupid question, but he had blurted it out long before he had time to think about it. It was the sleep fog and the painkillers.

 

“Your copilot called me.”

 

He wondered where Finn had gotten the number from. Had the General called him as well from their days in the Shatterdome together?

 

“I thought I wouldn’t have to answer any questions about why I wanted to see how you were mending for myself. You look a lot better than what I expected from my first conversation with Finn.”

 

“Yes, well, I hear a new arm can make you look up to twenty-five years younger.”

 

“It’s more than that,” his dad said, looking at him thoughtfully, and he wasn’t sure he liked that look. It was the same look his dad had given him when he had been eight years old and declared to his father that he wanted to be a Ranger just like his mother. Of course, that hadn’t been that long since they had lost her. His father had given him that look and told him he should think on it until he was older, that he couldn’t pilot yet anyway and by the time he was old enough the Kaiju might no longer be a threat to anyone. Of course, that last part had been wishing thinking on everyone’s part, but he had thought about it his entire life.

 

“I know it was rough when you lost _Black One_.”

 

“I didn’t lose _Black One_ ,” he protested. “I couldn’t connect with Snap anymore.” Luckily there had been other Jaegars, or that Kaiju might have ripped right through Guatemala and he and his dad might not be having this conversation right now.

 

“The point is you were never quite the same when you came back home after leaving the Shatterdome.”

 

How could he have been? He had spent his whole life thinking he was going to be a Ranger. That he was going to inspire other people the same way his mother had inspired him. That he could protect the people he loved from a greater threat. Then the First Order had taken it all away from him. They had rummaged through his brain like raccoons digging through last week’s garbage and tossed him aside just as easily. When he returned, he had been unable to drift with Snap who he had known and trusted his whole life. Even if he had told the General everything he knew, which wasn’t much, and if he had told her what they had done, likely no one would have believed him. If it hadn’t happened to him, he probably wouldn’t have believed it either. Where had they gotten the technology?

 

“When I look at you now though, I see the old you again. The one who wanted to fight. The one who knew he could make a difference.”

 

“Not much has changed.” Besides, Finn had a new partner now, and he wasn’t sure he would even be able to pilot a Jaegar again. He wanted to, but if Finn decided he preferred Rey, he wasn’t going to force the issue. Finn maybe deserved a better partner anyway. One who might not suddenly be unable to drift with him again. “I might be forced to retire again, if they let me out of here.”

 

“I spoke to your doctor earlier, she seems to think you’ll be out of here by the end of the week.”

 

Sure, because he could use his arm almost as well as his right now and the teeth wounds had mostly healed. He figured the only reason they still kept him there was to make sure the residual Kaiju blood in his veins did not cause any further complications than it already had. It there was any poison left, it probably was not going to do anything more to him at this point in his life. Couple of years though, than he might have to worry again. His mother had suffered from too much exposure to Kaiju blood.

 

“Besides, it’s not just that you’re in a Jaegar again,” his dad told him, the unspoken words about his mother hanging in the air between them. They had never really talked about his mother much after she had passed. “I think it has something to do with your new copilot.” Because he had somehow managed to get through to him again after countless psychological tests and experiments had failed. “He’s a good man.”

 

“Yeah, he is.”

 

Finn had taken a chance on him when common sense would have told everyone else to stay away. Maybe his dad was right about one thing. Maybe he had once again found something worth fighting for. He was going to find Norra when he got out of here and start training again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know there was a big gap again in between chapters, but I can give a heads up this time that because of Nanowrimo, I probably won't be able to get back to this until sometime in December. Thanks for your patience and understanding.


	10. Old Wounds

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Finn drifts with Rey and they take down their first Kaiju together. 
> 
> Jess introduces him to the horrific portrayal of Poe in As the Tide Ebbs, but before they can get through an entire episode, General Organa comes to inform him that Poe has been released from medical. Finn excuses himself from the company of the two young women to welcome Poe back to life as a Ranger.

There had been five Kaiju attacks since the discovery of the second breach. The scientists had not been able to figure out the pattern yet, to decipher the frequency of the attacks or which Rift they would even emerge from. The Shatterdome was continually on stand by, everyone constantly on edge waiting for the sirens to blare. He didn’t sleep well at night, with BB-8 perched on the ladder beside him, wondering if there was going to be anything left for Poe to return to. The other Shatterdomes had managed to repeal the attacks with minimum casualties, but the Jaegar’s were always damaged. With the unpredictable time table, no one ever knew if the repairs would be complete before the next Kaiju came through.

 

Five times a Kaiju had come through, and number six saw him on the left side of _Renegade Nova_. Rey was strapped in to his right, staring out at the open ocean, waiting for their quarry to come to land. _Snap Testor_ was on standby, waiting to swoop in should they fail, but no one wanted to risk two Jaegars for a single Kaiju.

 

Drifting with Rey was a different experience from drifting with Poe. With Poe, there had always been that guarded resistance, like he was afraid of something Finn might bring out in his memories. Rey was like sinking into the open ocean, her mind surrounding him, guiding him into his next thought or action. Though they were a team, there was no doubt in his mind that she was in the lead, almost like when two people were in a dance. He thought it would be difficult to adjust to piloting on the left, but with Rey in control he had sunk into it naturally. His back twitched at the memory of being violently ripped away from Poe, but before he could become too overwhelmed with it, Rey quickly blocked it out. They would not be able to hold their position against the Kaiju if he kept getting lost in his own memories. Strange how hers never seemed to seep through.

 

“There,” she said, her sharp eyes detecting the movement along the horizon long before he did. His gaze automatically shifted to the smudge she saw moving through the water. It was still pretty far out there, but it would probably be on them soon enough. Being prepared for the enemy they were facing was half the battle.

 

“ _Renegade Nova_ , its imperative that you hold your position,” command said over the comms. “Los Angeles is only about seventy miles away from you, and we absolutely do not want it to go to land there.” There were, of course, uninhabited stretches of coast where they would still have time to fight back the Kaiju, but well over two million people still clung to an existence there, likely people who had no where else to go. The wealthy now lived exclusively on the Atlantic Ocean.

 

“Copy that,” Rey said back into the comms. “What can you tell us about the Kaiju??”

 

“It’s a bipedal category two, nothing that _Renegade Nova_ shouldn’t be able to handle.”

 

They thought that about the last Kaiju _Renegade Nova_ had faced, and Poe was still recovering from that attack. A wave of calm and comfort that Poe was recovering swiftly washed over him from Rey, and he smiled at her in appreciation. Worrying needlessly about Poe was not going to keep him alive now. And if he couldn’t stop the very real threat coming toward him, he would never be able to see Poe again

 

“Engaging target,” Rey informed him as the Kaiju rose from the water in front of them. It was ugly, even by Kaiju standards, like they had only had time to half form it before they had sent it through. They readied their staff together in their right hand and stepped forward to engage the creature.

 

It was so easy to let Rey take control, to let her wasteland honed survival instincts take over. She knew how to fight, and if he actually thought about their techniques, he would only slow them down. Better instead to follow her lead in this deadly dance, to test at the Kaiju’s defenses to see where the best place would be to strike. She fought through pain like she didn’t even feel it, like the difference between life and death was to stop and acknowledge her pain or to keep fighting. He lost track of time inside _Renegade Nova_ , his whole life boiling down to that battle. To think of anything else, the past or the future, would be suicide. He had to keep fighting.

 

They found the Kaiju’s weak spot, a soft, fleshy spot under its right arm where it seemed its makers had neglected to give it armor. Rather, he believed Rey had found its weak spot which she quickly pressed to her advantage. She used their staff to push back the creature and pressed the plasma canon against the weak spot to blow a hole in the creature. The entire battle had lasted a little over two hours, he discovered when they got back to the Shatterdome, but it had felt like minutes and an eternity all at one.

 

They were greeted with cheers when they returned to the Shatterdome. _Renegade Nova_ had sustained minimal damage in the process, but it didn’t matter because _Snap Testor_ would be sent out the next time the Kaiju came close. Jess gave them both hugs, and Wexley patted Rey on the shoulder before awkwardly shaking hands with him. The General was absent as was Poe, likely because he was still not allowed out of medical. Poe probably did not even know he had been sent out. The elation he had felt stepping out of the Jaegar dried up and left him empty. Rey gave him a worried glance, but she was drawn away by a reporter.

 

“Ranger Sloane,” Sinjir said,, looking depressingly sober in his dress uniform as he pushed his way through the crowd to stand next to him. “You’re injured,” he said, indicating his left arm. He looked down to see his suit had been torn and he was bleeding from a gaping wound. It had not been her own pain that Rey had pushed them through. “You should get yourself to medical to get that taken care of.” Sinjir said it loudly enough that the reporters around them could hear. Some of them had cornered Jess, but none of them bothered him now that it was public knowledge he was wounded.

 

Which also gave him the perfect opportunity to let Poe know he was still alive since he would have been bound to hear those sirens even down in medical.

 

~*~*~

 

Even with the constant threat of Kaiju attack, they still needed some downtime which usually consisted of clustering around the old tv in the lounge to watch _As the Tide Ebbs_.

 

Finn sat on the edge of the couch, his arm pushing into the thin frame. Jess was curled up on the other side with her legs pulled under her and the remote on the faded upholstery next to her. Rey preferred to sit on the plush rug in front of them, using the excuse that the couch was too uncomfortable. Sometimes someone else would join them, but usually it was just the three of them. They had just finished an episode in which he was fairly certain one of the characters had been based off one of the Rangers from the Second Contact War.

 

“Do they base all their characters off real people?” he asked as the credits started to roll.

 

“Not all of them.”

 

He wondered what the criteria was for being on the show. If they had to be dead, or sign a release or have interesting stories about them. Maybe someday someone would want to write a storyline with a character based on him. Would it be around his time with Poe or his time with Rey? He was almost convinced they would want to do something with Rey, a young woman who could pilot a Jaegar by herself. Technically he had done that as well, if only briefly, to raise the pole to immobilize that Kaiju.

 

“Did they ever base a character off Poe?” He thought by now he should have run across it unless Jess was deliberately withholding those episodes from him.

 

“I thought you would never ask!” She launched herself towards her DVD case and started flipping through it. “He was only on for about seven weeks before they had to scrap the character due to backlash.” She found whatever DVD she was looking for and popped it into the player before collapsing back onto the couch.

 

“Backlash?” Poe had been a highly respected and well adored Ranger. Why would people possible be upset about him being included in that cheesy soap opera?

 

“You’ll see,” Jess told him as she turned the DVD on.

 

He recognized the setting as the show’s interpretation of the Hong Kong Shatterdome, even though he was certain it was better lit than what the show portrayed. He was also certain that no nurse would be wearing a skirt that short or bend like that over a desk when she could just pick the paper up.

 

“Hello, nurse.”

 

The nurse jumped and turned around, clutching the clipboard to her ample chest. “Ranger Martinez! You startled me,” she said in a breathy voice more suited to a porno than the daytime show she was actually in.

 

The camera panned to ‘Ranger Martinez,’ a man with long dark curly hair and a white blouse that was unbuttoned to the navel.

 

“Jessika, what the hell am I watching?” he asked, not caring that he was blocking out the dialogue which couldn’t be that good anyway. He was starting to think Jess had accidentally put the wrong movie in. ‘Ranger Martinez’ had already pushed the nurse up against the desk and shoved his tongue down her throat. Not that she seemed to mind much. It was awkward, almost unbearable to watch.

 

“The character that almost got the show canceled,” she said. Thankfully, the scene cut, before it could get too raunchy, to a scene with one of Rey’s favorite characters, a young woman who was the most respected mechanic in the P.P.D.C.

 

“Why wasn’t it?” he asked quietly. Had Poe ever been aware of the portrayal?

 

“The network apologized and pulled the character. Sadly, not enough people cared enough to impact the ratings.”

 

“Why do you even have these episodes?”

 

“Because I think it’s funny that they paired a Ranger Dameron proxy with one person, let alone the fifty-two women the show paired him with.”

 

“Fifty-two? You said the character was only on for seven weeks.” Was that what people actually thought about Poe? What would they think of him? What would they think about his relationship with Poe?

 

“Just watch,” Jess said, nodding towards the tv.

 

It wasn’t long before the show switched back to Ranger Martinez. This time he was laying in a double bed with a blanket covering up to his waist. Pressed up against his side was a dark haired woman whose blanket covering provided the bare minimum to get by on daytime network television.

 

“That’s not the same woman from before,” Rey pointed out just as he had the same realization.

 

“The official character description for Ranger Martinez said he had a floozy in every Shatterdome and knew tricks to make a girl’s knees weak.”

 

“Wow.”

 

“He’s not really like that, is he?” Rey asked, looking over her shoulder at the two of them. He would have to introduce the two of them soon before she got too many ideas from the show.

 

“Absolutely not.”

 

“You’ll have to ask Finn about the weak in the knees bit,” Jess added helpfully.

 

“I wouldn’t-” he started to protest “-Where did that other woman come from?” he asked, pointing to the screen where another naked woman had somehow attached herself to Ranger Martinez’s other side.

 

“He’s like a magnet for naked women,” Jess said as if that were a satisfactory explanation.

 

“This is the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever seen.” He, for one, had never seen any naked women throw themselves at Poe.

 

“It really is,” Jess readily agreed. “And we are never going to tell Temmin that we watched them. I only really have them so I can have the complete set, and there’s a great story with Lyla around the same time.” Lyla, he had quickly learned, was Jess’ favorite character, a young native Hawaiian who had become a Ranger because she had idolized a Ranger named Mark that he was fairly sure was based on a real person from the Third Contact War.

 

“Agreed,” he said without hesitation. Amazing that Jess didn’t seem to be too worried that it might come out in the Drift. Perhaps she had come up with an effective method to control what Wexley could or could not see in her mind. He wouldn’t ask her about it in front of Rey though, for fear she might think he wanted to hide something from her.

 

“Finn,” General Organa said quietly from the doorway behind them, and he turned over his shoulder to look at her. “They’ve released Poe from medical.”

 

He looked towards each of the women in turn. “Go,” Rey told him with a happy laugh before he could even ask forgiveness for leaving them. As he sidled past the General who remained in the doorway, he saw Jess move off the couch to sit with Rey on the ground.

 

He practically ran through the Shatterdome to get to medical, excusing himself when he almost collided with a group of scientists and easing his way around _Snap Testor’_ s mechanics. He found Poe just outside of medical, walking next to Norra.

 

“Poe!” he said, increasing his stride once his copilot was in sight.

 

“Finn, buddy!”

 

He threw himself into the hug, pulling Poe tightly up against him. Poe was with him, and he was very much alive, and he couldn’t even tell the difference between the two arms that wrapped around him in return.

 

“Good to see you too,” Poe said into his shoulder, patting him lightly on the back.

 

“Poe, I’ll see you in training tomorrow,” Norra said, patting Poe briefly on the shoulder as she walked away.

 

Reluctantly, he pulled away from Poe, realizing that they couldn’t stand there in the hallway forever and that Poe would most likely want to see BB-8. They started walking back to their shared room, side by side, hands almost brushing but not quite.

 

“So does that mean you’ll be coming back to _Renegade Nova_?” he asked as they walked. Neither one of them seemed to be in much of a hurry, knowing that things would likely be different once they got back to their room. He liked Rey and he liked piloting with Rey. No one had asked him to make that decision yet, but the truth was, Rey didn’t need him. He might have been the one who had been so incompatible with everyone that they had to bring Poe out of retirement, but with Poe’s problems with drifting, he might be Poe’s only chance at continuing to be a Ranger. And if someone would have forced him to make that decision, well, Rey had been inside his mind. He didn’t think she would begrudge him if he chose to continue to pilot with Poe instead of her.

 

“As soon as Norra can get me back into shape.” Norra was very good at her job, and he had no doubt that she would get Poe Jaegar ready again within a matter of weeks. In the meantime, he could continue to do test runs with Rey, and deploy in Renegade Nova again if they were needed. “Have you been keeping _Renegade Nova_ in good condition for me while I was gone?”

 

“She’s ready to go whenever you are.”

 

“How’s BB-8 been doing?”

 

“Great. That bird and I have made great progress in our relationship.”

 

“Good to hear it,” Poe said, clapping him on the shoulder with a strength that surprised him, and he almost stumbled forward. He must not have been used to the new arm yet.

 

They made it back to their room and BB-8 quickly moved to Poe’s shoulder and started nuzzling through his hair.

 

“Missed you too,” Poe said as he moved over to the bed and sat down on the lower bunk.

 

Finn didn’t quite know what to do first, and he stood awkwardly in the center of the room. There was a lot they had to talk about, not the least of which was what had happened while Poe had been in medical. The Shatterdome’s decision to pair him up with Rey in the interim hung unspoken between them. There was no way Poe had forgiven him for that one yet when he hadn’t even been able to forgive himself. There had to have been a better way to go about it then telling Poe after the fact. They needed to talk about that at some time, or else Poe was just going to be reminded of it every time they drifted together anyway, and he wasn’t sure he wanted to find out Poe’s real feelings on the matter that way. He started to shrug his jacket off.

 

“Is that my jacket?” Poe asked him before he had gotten far.

 

“Oh, yeah.” He had been wearing it so long it had just become a part of his life. He had almost stopped thinking of it as Poe’s jacket. “Sorry.”

 

“Not a problem. It looks better on you anyway.”

 

Finn hesitated a moment before sitting down on the bed next to Poe. “How’s the arm?”

 

“Better. How’s your back and eye?”

 

“You heard about that?” He hadn’t thought about it in a long time, not since he had been released from medical. His sight had returned fully within a matter of days, long before they had even deemed him fit to leave the hospital bed. Every now and again he would feel a slight twinge if he stretched the wrong way, but for the most part he had forgotten about it. “It left a pretty nasty scar.” He had looked at it once in the full length mirrors in the locker room, a burn scar that extended from his left shoulder down to his waist. From the stress of being so traumatically separated from Poe.

 

“Can I see it?” Poe asked quietly as if he were afraid of the answer. Like he was afraid of being pushed away. “You’ve seen mine.”

 

“I don’t think it works like that.” For one thing, he hadn’t actually seen Poe’s scar since he had always been in that hospital gown. Despite his misgivings, he pulled his shirt off over his head, dropping it to the floor as he turned his back towards his copilot. Plenty of people had seen that scar already. The doctors, _Renegade Nova_ ’s crew, Rey, the General, but with Poe it felt different somehow. Maybe because that scar would be a reminder for the rest of his days how close he had come to losing Poe. A physical reminder of what it was like to have someone violently torn away from him.

 

“That looks like it hurt,” Poe said softly, and he felt the soft brush of his fingertips next to the scar on the middle of his back, and he tried not to shiver.

 

“You have no idea,” he said, shifting his position so he was facing Poe again. He reached over to Poe’s knee. “Don’t you ever try to die without me again,” he said with what he hoped was a light tone, but he knew he couldn’t keep some of the worry out of his voice. Rangers were supposed to die together; he knew that now much better than any book could have told him. It certainly strengthened his respect for those Rangers who had lost their partners and still managed to carry on. If Rey and Jess and the others hadn’t been there, he didn’t know how he would have managed to get through, especially if Poe wouldn’t have made it.

 

“I’ll do my best,” Poe said with a light smile. “But that means you can’t die before I get back in the cockpit.” Poe extracted BB-8 from his shoulder and laid back on the bed. It had been a long time since he had been forced to share a bed with anyone. Rey had the decency to respect his privacy when she wasn’t in his mind.

 

“Deal,” he said, stretching out on the bed beside him. It was too early to go to sleep, and he didn’t think Poe would want to sleep anyway after spending so much time confined to that other room. He remembered what that was like, going stir crazy and wondering if he was ever going to see his own bed again. Except Poe hadn’t even made the effort to go to his own bed, and it couldn’t possibly be because he was too tired. “So, Ranger Wexley has told me a few stories about you,” he said, rolling onto his side and attempting to make light conversation.

 

“Good ones, I hope?”

 

“Absolutely not. The most embarrassing ones he could think of.”

 

“Remind me to thank him later.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have an outline! Actually written down now instead of floating around in my head, which should help with more regular updates. There are 21 parts to the outline, but at this point I'm unsure if that will translate to a total of 21 chapters or not considering an earlier part had to be split up when I realized that it was getting too long. 
> 
> That said, it does mean that we're about halfway through, and I would like to thank all the readers that have been here from the beginning. You're all the best, and your slow burn patience is about to pay off.


	11. Mend

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Finn starts to suspect that General Organa believes the upper ranks of the PPDC have been infiltrated by First Order sympathizers. Poe and Jess have a much needed conversation after a sparring session. In an attempt to get away for a little bit, Finn and Poe go to dinner downtown instead of at the Shatterdome.

“When do you think you’ll start drifting with Poe again?” Rey asked Finn as they left training together, walking in matching strides. He knew he would miss working with her, but at least she would still be around the Shatterdome. Unlike when Poe had left Ranger Wexley behind. He already knew what that guilt felt like, and he was under no obligations to repeat Poe’s mistakes. Besides, Poe needed him in a way that Rey did not, and she knew now what it was like to drift with someone. He knew she would not begrudge him for going back to his original partner.

 

“I see him less now than I did before,” he admitted as they walked. “He spends almost all day training with Nora.” If he worried perhaps that Poe might be pushing himself just a tad too hard, he did not voice those concerns to Rey. He needed to believe that neither Nora nor BB-8 would allow him to do something dangerous.

 

“General Organa says she’s going to find me a teacher,” Rey informed him. That way when she went to pilot _Scavenger_ , she would be safe. She would know how to handle the machine properly on her own.

 

“Does she have someone in mind?” There were so few that could do it, fewer still those who could do it reliably. He had done it once, the first day they had met, but he would not know where to begin any more than she would.

 

“She said her brother would be the best option. He piloted by himself for years, and he has teaching experience.”

 

“Except no one has seen Luke Skywalker for years,” and he had the feeling that if General Organa knew where he was, she could have brought him back to the Shatterdome already. Rey’s silence confirmed that even though Luke was the best option, he was not the most accessible. “Does she know of any others?” Perhaps whoever Luke had trained before could be more easily tracked down.

 

“She’s been asking quietly around the other Shatterdomes. So far nothing has turned up.”

 

They had not made Rey’s abilities common knowledge yet. Ostensibly, the reason was that Rey was untrained, her ability to pilot solo unreliable, and the other Shatterdomes would try to make bids on her if they knew San Francisco had a third working Jaegar and the means to pilot it. By all accounts, one of them should move to a more northern location. The second rift was more active than any of their experts had predicted.

 

Yet he didn’t think General Organa would keep her secret just to keep her in San Francisco. If necessary, she would have moved them all where they could provide the most benefit, which meant there was someone else General Organa wanted to protect Rey from. The First Order, perhaps? She had not broached the subject with him since he had first offered to join her in her crusade against them. Yet they were impossible to escape. More and more people were calling on them for protection. After every Kaiju attack, they would make their own broadcast highlighting the shortcomings of the Jaegars that had been dropped. It was hard to watch the sacrifices of his fellow Rangers be downplayed, but he forced himself to watch them all the same. General Organa might call upon him and he wanted to be well informed.

 

Not only could he not escape them on the news, he was reminded of them every time he looked at Poe. They had done something to him, and they could not be allowed to roam free to do that to someone else. Whatever reasons General Organa had for disliking the First Order, he and she agreed that the only solution would be to put a permanent end to their operation.

 

Had Poe once piloted a Jaegar solo? It was worth looking in to, to see if perhaps that was the reason why the First Order had targeted him. If that were the case, it would explain why General Organa was so secretive about Rey’s existence. Still, it did not explain why she had not mentioned it to the other Shatterdomes. Unless, of course, she thought the upper ranks had been infiltrated by First Order sympathizers.

 

He glanced over at Rey walking next to him. How much did she know about the additional dangers the First Order represented? Would she become a target for them if they learned about her? As if she could sense his troubled thoughts, even now outside the Drift, she looked over to him with a reassuring smile. If only it were that easy to push his own dark thoughts away.

 

~*~*~

 

Getting Jaegar ready again was proving to be much more difficult than Poe had anticipated. He spent countless hours in the kwoon with Nora, sparring against her while BB-8 played on an improvised perch at the edge of the mat. The problem was not that he had lost too much skill when he had been recovering from the last attack. His body still remembered the moves well enough, but his arm did not want to execute them the way he thought it should. When he thought too hard about it, sometimes it would not respond at all and he would get soundly whacked by Nora’s staff. Other times he had not quite mastered how much strength was in that arm, and he had almost hurt Nora had she not been quick to dodge his attacks.

 

“Perhaps we should discuss the possibility of you and Finnick switching sides,” Nora suggested from where she calmly stood on the other side of the mat, allowing him a moment to catch his breath. He didn’t remember sweating this much the first time he had gone through Jaegar training.

 

He shook his head. “That’s not fair to Finn. He’d have to be retrained.” It was not Finn’s fault that he couldn’t figure out how to use this new arm they had equipped him with.

 

“Finn already pilots on the left with Rey,” Nora told him. Finn had not shared that information with him. Then again, he supposed he and Finn had not discussed the specifics of Finn’s time with Rey. He hadn’t asked. The less he knew the less he would think about it later when was time for them to drift together again. He knew enough. He knew that they had drifted easily on their first try. “I’m sure he would be willing to stay there for your sake.”

 

“If I can’t control this arm, I have no business trying to control a Jaegar,” he said as he stooped down to pick up his staff. He would continue to train with Nora until he was sure he would not fail himself or Finn again.

 

“Mind if I go a round?” a female voice called, and he almost thought that by thinking of her he had summoned her to the _kwoon_. Except it wasn’t Rey who stood on the edge of the mat with a staff in hand. It was Snap’s new copilot, Ranger Pava. They had never been formally introduced, but he knew her well enough to recognize her. For week he had watched her train with Snap, watched her train to take his place while they did everything they could to figure out what was wrong with him. When it became apparent they had no answers for him, he left and Jessika Pava had taken his place entirely.

 

“I’m not sure that’s a good idea,” Nora suggested in a way that suggested she wasn’t sure if _she_ should be training with him. As least if Nora got injured, the Shatterdome would still have all their Rangers ready for an attack.

 

“I’ve been watching him,” Ranger Pava said confidently, and he wondered if she had always been this cocky. Snap did seem to attract a certain personality type. He had been like that once, many years ago. Thinking he was the match of any of the other Rangers. Maybe she was as good as she thought she was. Or maybe she was just lucky. “I’m pretty sure I can handle him.”

 

“Both of you be careful,” Nora said as she made her way off the mat and Ranger Pava took her place. Nora was probably just glad that someone else had volunteered. It couldn’t be easy for her, training him the way she had been and dodging his more reckless attacks. She was no longer a young Ranger herself.

 

“Why are you doing this?” he asked as she readied her staff across from him. She didn’t owe him anything. One of them could end up seriously hurt, and he wouldn’t put it past fate for it to be him. He remembered how she fought, remembered how much different it had been from his own style and how he had scoffed at the notion that she would be able to replace him.

 

“Because you wouldn’t talk to me,” she said with a small shrug.

 

Not that she gave him any time to talk. Years of honing her skills in the Jaegar made her much faster than he remembered. She struck at him without warning or any input from Nora. He didn’t have time to think about it, only time to react. She was faster than Finn had been when they had done their compatibility test.

 

She kept pressing him from the left, forcing him to fight back from that side. He retaliated far harder than he anticipated, certain that he was going to knock her out and have to explain that one to Snap. She ducked under his attack and rolled back to her feet, attacking him again before he managed to register what had happened. She pressed him harder, driving him back across the mat until his heel connected with the edge. He couldn’t just let he get the best of him that easily. That would prove that they were right to have replaced him with her all those years ago.

 

He wouldn’t let her prove to be the better pilot. He pushed back against her, putting her on the defensive. He needed to get away from the edge of the mat. She deflected his attacks with the same speed and grace she had used earlier.

 

They must have mutually agreed to stop some time later, staring each other down in the center of the mat. He was trying to recover his breath without seeming too obvious about it while she stared mutely at him like she had done nothing more exhausting than having gone a leisurely stroll through the park. All it did was remind him of how many  Rangers were so much younger than him, including Finn. No wonder Finn had found so much comfort in working with Rey. He had probably been relieved to have been partnered with someone who was naturally closer to his capabilities. Sometime during his sparring session with Ranger Pava, Nora had left the _kwoon_ , leaving BB-8 as their only witness. He knew what it meant that neither one of them had managed to strike a blow against the other in such a long period. Knew what it meant but would never actually speak of it out loud. He wasn’t surprised though. 

 

“What do you want from me?” he asked of Ranger Pava when it became apparent that she was not going to leave him alone to the solitude he craved. She should have been off with Snap anyway, not interrupting his training sessions with Nora. She had to have had better things to be doing with her time.

 

“A chance,” she said, holding her staff loosely in one hand at her side. “I’ve had to live with the ghost of you for so long, and we never had the chance to properly meet.”

 

Maybe because there had only been two times when they had occupied the same space. Recently, he had been in the medical ward and had not added her to his list of approved visitors. Before that, they had been in Guatemala, and he had done everything he could to avoid her.

 

“If your curiosity has been satisfied, maybe next time you’ll let me continue my training.” Since Nora was gone, he assumed that they were done for the day and he moved swiftly to put his quarterstaff away. “I have a copilot to get back to.” He had Finn now. It didn’t matter that he had been replaced.

 

“I didn’t meant to replace you,” she called after him although she did not move from her position on the center of the mat, almost as if she were rooted to the spot. “I applied for the Jaegar program in Singapore when I was sixteen.” He paused with his hand still on the quarterstaff. She had been young when she had decided she wanted to die in a Jaegar. “They told me I wasn’t a match for anyone, but they would keep my file in case they found someone. When they called me, they never told me I would be replacing someone else.”

 

If she had known, would she have not gone for additional testing? He didn’t bother to ask; he already knew the answers. He would have gone anyway, even if someone else lost their position, if it meant he would be able to pilot a Jaegar.

 

~*~*~

 

Even when he did not get the chance to see him the rest of the day, Finn made it a point of having dinner with Poe every night. They had been apart for so long, they needed to reestablish their connection quickly so they could get back in _Renegade Nova_ together as soon as they were needed. Which might be sooner than any one could have anticipated. None of them knew if they were going to survive the next Jaegar attack, and even though he trusted _Snap Testor_ quite literally with his life, the two of them could not hold the Shatterdome on their own. And Rey deserved the chance to pilot on her own, to see what she could do, especially after what she had done with Scavenger.

 

Poe wasn’t in the dining hall at their usual table when he peered in, and a quick glance around showed no signs of his tell tale bird either. He checked their room next, but it was empty, and he hastened away, not wanting to be reminded of all those nights he had spent in there alone. Poe must have spent a late evening working with Nora and was likely still in the _kwoon_. Maybe the two of them had lost track of time and needed a reminder that it was time to eat. As he approached the room, he heard a laugh that sounded almost like Jess’. He almost turned around, thinking Poe would be found somewhere else, until he heard a yell that was definitely BB-8.

 

When he rounded the corner into the room, he found Poe and Jess sitting side by side on the edge of the mat. Jess was definitely laughing about something, although he had clearly missed the joke and didn’t want to ask the two of them to repeat it. It was almost like walking in on a unicorn in the center of the room, and he didn’t want to break the spell.

 

“Hey, Finn,” Jess said as he cautiously approached the two of them with a tentative smile. “Poe and I were just exchanging stories.”

 

“About what?” he asked with a sinking feeling, remembering a certain show that Jess liked to share with him.

 

“Copilots,” she said with a conspiratorial grin. Copilot _s._ So they had not been exchanging stories just about Snap then, which would have been tolerable, but likely they had been exchanging stories about him as well. Good ones he hoped.

 

“I was just coming to grab Poe for dinner,” he said, extending his hand down to Poe. Nora was no where around, and if Poe had switched to training with Jess, he was sure to be exhausted by now. Poe wasn’t as young as he had once been, and Jess was a formidable opponent. He wouldn’t even spar with her since he could easily avoid it, even though Rey had occasionally used her as a training partner. And come back to him with more than a few bruises. Poe took his hand and rose to stand next to him. “You’re more than welcome to join us for dinner,” he told Jess, since she and Poe seemed to be getting along so well and he didn’t want the moment to end. Besides, he wasn’t sure of the last time he had even seen her in the mess hall even though he was sure he had seen Ranger Wexley there on more than one occasion.

 

“No, thanks,” she said, bouncing to her feet and brushing off the front of her pants. “I think I’m going to head into the city for dinner.” Technically, they were not restricted to the Shatterdome, but he had never thought about going out into public for a meal. He supposed it was because he didn’t know how the public would react if they recognized him. If they would ask him about Poe, or how he had been doing since the attack, or some of them who had sent mail suggesting that he should stick with Rey instead of going back to Poe. Someone who had very strongly suggested that Poe should have retired a long time ago and that the whole Shatterdome might be better off without him. He had shredded the letter without even giving it the dignity of reading it the whole way through and had used it as lining under BB-8’s perch. “I’ve had more than enough of being a third wheel.” She hummed a little tune as she sauntered from the room, and he thought he recognized the notes from her soap opera.

 

“What do you think she meant by that?” he asked once she was out of earshot. She didn’t complain about being a third wheel when she was hanging out with him and Rey. Maybe at those moments she thought he was being the third wheel. He had never thought about that possibility before, but, given the choice, Jess did seem to prefer spending time with Rey than with him.

 

“I’m sure it’s nothing,” Poe told him, patting him not so lightly on the back. It had probably intended for it to be playful, but he almost staggered under the force. That was probably why Poe spent so much time retraining with Nora, so he could control the arm better. “Did you happen to notice what’s on the menu for tonight?”

 

“No, but I think Jess had a good idea about going downtown.” It would be nice to have something besides standard Shatterdome fare for a change. Perhaps something that didn’t come served on a tray. Not that there was anything wrong with the food, but it just made him feel like maybe all they were fighting for was for people to continue to eat government rationed food for the rest of their lives. There was still good chefs out there, making good food in the cities for the people who lived there. There was so much more worth fighting for than what could be found inside the walls of the Shatterdome, and there was no telling how much longer he would be around to appreciate it. And if he could take Poe along with him, so much the better. “I think we should go out to eat tonight.” It would be good to spend sometime alone with Poe without the whole Shatterdome watching them for a chance. It might also be good for the people of San Francisco to see Poe out and about, to see that nothing was going to keep the Rangers who were defending them down.

 

“Did you have some place in mind?” Neither one of them were natives to the city, and he wasn’t exactly sure what the options were even more. He hadn’t gone out for dinner since he had lived on the East Coast, before he had enrolled in Ranger Academy, and over there, the options were much more varied. After all, on the East Coast they didn’t have to worry about the Kaiju coming and destroying their establishment.

 

After returning BB-8 to their room for the evening, they ended up asking for restaurant advice from one of the mechanics, who gave them a small list of places that were both relatively inexpensive but where they weren’t likely to cause much of a disturbance by attending them. Places where they could enjoy their meal while being relatively left in peace, although as they were walking away, Poe did point out to him that it was possible that people were going to ask for his autograph even at the places the mechanic had given them. His, but not Poe’s. As if Poe no longer considered himself to be a hero worthy of note. He thought about that letter he had gotten and wondered if he had torn it small enough so that Poe would not be able to read it. He should have checked the return address, so he knew where the guy lived.

 

The first few places they checked on the list they had walked away from almost immediately. The first one was currently serving a too curious reporter who recognized them the minute they walked through the door and hurled questions after them as to whether or not this meant the public could expect to see Poe back in Renegade Nova anytime soon. They managed to evade him by slipping into a mostly impassive crowd and eventually ducking down a dark alley. The second one they stopped at did not smell too appetizing from the streets, perhaps it had changed owners since the last time the mechanic had been there, and they had simultaneously decided to walk on to the next one on their list.

 

The third one was a small establishment on a small road that had a few chairs outside for daytime customers when the weather was nicer. The atmosphere was subdued when they walked inside, the air quiet with a gentle hum of conversation, and the lighting was dim enough that they would only be recognized by someone who was sitting right next to them. He was so starving that he would have gone back to the second restaurant if it meant he could be served right away. The host walked up to them before they even had a chance to confer if this would be the right place for them or not, even though he really hoped it would be. Every step they took through the streets raised the hairs on the back of his neck like someone was watching them. Not in the sense that someone was a fan, or someone was trying to place them, but someone who watched them with malicious intent. Being inside made him feel much safer.

 

“Ah, Ranger Sloane, Ranger Dameron, how nice of you to visit our little establishment this evening,” the man said with a broad grin, and something settled inside of him. “I take it the two of you will want a more private table, away from prying eyes that might be prone to gossip?” Before either one of them could answer, the man started leading them away towards the back of the restaurant and if he wanted dinner, he was going to have to follow him. The man led them to a table in a corner lit only by candles and the dim glow of a tv mounted on the opposite corner from the table. He thanked the man as he sat down, and the man placed a menu in front of both of them.

 

“It has been a long time since a Ranger has come. But we still know how to treat them with respect.” And privacy. No one was close enough to get a good look at them, and no one had stared on their way through. He realized belatedly that most of the people there had been couples, too absorbed in each other to notice whatever else was going on around them. At least that meant it was very unlikely that people would be bothering them while they were trying to eat. It was a place where a Ranger could go to get a quiet meal, and he resolved to thank the mechanic somehow when they got back to the Shatterdome. “I’ll be back to take your order in a few minutes.”

 

“This is...” he gestured vaguely to the place setting as he picked up his menu, trying to decide on a word even though ‘romantic’ was the first one that came to mind, “...nice.” Nice was noncommittal, and he didn’t want to offend their host by demanding that he should change something. Besides, he and Poe had never talked about that moment in the medical wing, if it had even been a moment and not just his imagination because he had been so relieved to see Poe alive and awake. There had never been a good time to bring it up either, with him working with Rey and Poe training consistently with Nora. Right before they intended to go to sleep didn’t seem like a good idea either, as one or both of them might not get the answer they wanted to hear out of that conversation. He didn’t know what answer he wanted for himself, let alone what Poe felt about the situation. The last thing he wanted to do right now was to push Poe away.

 

“Most Rangers are either related or in a relationship,” Poe pointed out. Everyone knew about it at the Ranger academy even though some of them never wanted to talk about it. He could think of a few Rangers who weren’t in a relationship, themselves included, but he didn’t feel like it was a good time to bring that up. “And we aren’t related.”

 

Sometimes he wished the rumors were true and he could read Poe’s mind outside of the Drift. It would certainly be helpful in situations like this. Perhaps it was the stupid candles, or the fact that their host just brought back an expensive bottle of wine and declared it was on the house, or maybe he was just losing the divide between the Drift and reality, but he didn’t know if Poe was telling him that the owner of the restaurant thought they were dating or if Poe was insinuating that they should be dating. Or perhaps he was just jumping to conclusions and should not say anything. Just because Poe’s file said he had a preference for men did not necessarily mean that Poe would be attracted to him.

 

“Once we start drifting again, you can stay with Rey, you know,” Poe said so quietly that at first he wasn’t sure he heard him correctly. “I’m used to it.” So that was why he had brought up the fact about Rangers being in relationships, because he thought he was with Rey. He remembered what Jess had said about being a third wheel, and realized she and Poe had more in common than the two of them had initially thought.

 

“I’m not with Rey,” he said, perhaps more strongly than he intended, because Poe gave him a look that suggested not only did he not believe him, but on the odd chance he was telling the truth, he was going to change his mind about that fairly quickly. “I’m not.” Sure, Rey was pretty and she made him smile, but there was something about her that wasn’t… To hell with it. He was going to find out what had almost happened after the incident. “Poe,” he started, reaching across the table to grab Poe’s hand in his, to keep him focused on him. As he took Poe’s hand in his, the hair on the back of his neck rose on end again, like it had out on the street when he thought they were being followed. He turned his head to look towards the door. A man with a dark leather jacket had just entered the restaurant, scanning the patrons like he was looking for someone. Like he was looking for them.


	12. Survival

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Finn and Poe manage to escape a dangerous attack, but others aren't so lucky. With only one serviceable Jaegar at the Shatterdome, the two of them will have to drift together again far earlier than anyone had anticipated.

Something inside screamed at him to run, to get away from there as quickly as he could.

 

A breaking news flash distracted him for a moment, pulling his attention to the TV. “We’ve had several confirmed reports that Rangers around the globe have been attacked in the streets tonight,” the reporter said solemnly, and behind her he could see people running through what looked like the streets of downtown Hong Kong. “So far we have received word that Rangers in the following cities have been attacked: Hong Kong, Anchorage, Sydney, San Francisco, and Los Cabos.” They hadn’t been attacked. Not yet. But Jess was out in the city as well. And they would be next if they didn’t make it back to the Shatterdome.

 

“Are you two ready to order?” the host asked as he walked back to them, but Finn kept his eyes on the man who had just entered. Another hostess was asking him something, and he was shaking his head quite vehemently.

 

“Is there a back door we could use?” he asked, wondering how exactly the other Rangers had been attacked. If the man had a weapon, would the table be enough to defend them if they had to use it for cover?

 

“But you two haven’t even had the chance to try any of our food yet,” the man said.

 

“We’ll come back some other time,” he said, gesturing his head towards the tv. He didn’t want to draw too much attention to themselves. Not yet. Not if the man hadn’t seen them.

 

“Ah, yes. Of course. Let me show you to the kitchen door.”

 

He kept a firm grip on Poe’s hand as he pulled him from the table and followed the host to the kitchen entrance. A few workers glanced at them oddly as they passed through, but nobody tried to stop them or ask what was going on. Poe might not yet have realized the danger they were in. Or the danger Jess was in. He had to push thoughts of her aside so he could stay sharp instead of dull with worry. The news said there had been confirmed attacks in San Francisco, and the man pursuing them had not yet made his move. It would not have been long if they had remained seated, he was sure about that. He didn’t let go of Poe’s hand until they had left their host inside and stepped out into the alley.

 

“We have to get back to the Shatterdome.” It would be safe there. There were plenty of armed guards inside the Shatterdome, and there they could regroup and find out exactly what had happened to Jess. He looked around for a moment, attempting to get his bearings. They had taken so many turns on the way there because they had stopped at those other places first, and they no longer had the time or luxury for a map. They needed to get back to the Shatterdome along the fastest route possible. There was no telling who could be a First Order sympathizer, or if the man following them had friends. There had to have been more than one of them, because he would not be able to follow them and attack Jess at the same time.

 

A bullet grazed the wall beside the restaurant door, and he decided quickest was no longer the safest option. Keeping low, he grabbed Poe’s sleeve and dragged him along behind him to the alley opening that did not have an armed woman taking aim at them. Another bullet clipped the wall where they had just been. He didn’t know if they were aiming at him or Poe or both of them, but he needed to get Poe out of there.

 

They emerged from the alley onto the busy street and he frantically looked around for cover. There were plenty of people walking, but he would not endanger them further by trying to blend into the crowd. Running on foot didn’t seem to be a likely option, because they would most likely be gunned down before they made it halfway back to the Shatterdome. There weren’t a lot of places they could disappear either, because he didn’t know how many of those people walking down the street would be willing to sell them out to a First Order hitman. Probably most of them, if the price was high enough. If it meant that they would be able to buy rations for another week.

 

There were several beat up old cars, the hallmark of the rich of San Francisco, and one motorbike parked along the side of the road. He didn’t know how to drive a car, but Rey did know a thing or two about motorbikes. And had shared that knowledge with him through the Drift. Hopefully.

 

“See if you can find a piece of wire!” he called to Poe as he reluctantly parted ways with him and made a beeline for the bike. There was enough debris lying around that Poe should not have much of a problem finding what they were looking for, and he needed to get everything else ready to go before their pursuers figured out where they had gone. It wouldn’t take long, and he doubted they had any qualms about opening fire when they might hit civilians. He found the wires connected to the ignition and followed them down. He twisted off the connector just as Poe approached him.

 

“Will this work?” he asked, holding out a small piece of wire.

 

“I hope so,” he said as he took it from him and attached it to the connector. Just because he had a basic idea of how it worked didn’t meant that it would work. Especially since Rey’s knowledge had been limited to what she had learned working out in the wasteland and fixing up her own bike. He sighed when he heard the bike click on, but it wasn’t time for them to relax. A shout rose behind them, and he wasn’t sure if it was the owner of the bike or the people that had been stalking them, but he wasn’t going to stick around for much longer to find out.

 

“Get on the bike,” he instructed Poe, as he tried to keep his breathing calm while he studied the machine underneath him. It couldn’t be much more complicated than piloting a Jaegar, could it? Lots of people rode motorbikes, and only a handful of individuals could pilot a Jaegar.

 

“Do you know how to drive this thing?” Poe asked as he got on behind him and wrapped his arms around his torso.

 

“Not a clue,” he responded honestly before starting the bike and taking off down the street. He hadn’t looked before pulling out and almost sideswiped a car coming the other way before he a quick adjustment got him back on his side of the road. This was nothing like what he had seen in Rey’s memories, and he hoped Poe couldn’t feel his heart pounding in his chest. He heard another shout behind them, then the unmistakeable sound of gunfire. Luckily, his rather erratic steering as he tried to get a feel for the machine made them a rather difficult target to hit.

 

He glanced up, catching the direction from the sun and going back west towards the ocean. Shouldn’t be too hard to find the Shatterdome from there if they managed to hit the beach, and it wasn’t likely that they would accidentally find themselves in the wasteland. They needed to keep moving though. Someone might be in pursuit, and they would be safe inside the Shatterdome. They could trace the bike’s registration from there and get it back to its rightful owner. He felt Poe shift his grip on his torso. They were safe. The two of them were going to be safe, and they were going to make it back to the Shatterdome and help the others find Jess if necessary. He saw the Shatterdome as he approached the outskirts of the city, and adjusted his course. The gates were closed, a state he had never seen them in before, and a handful of armed guards were standing outside. He slowed the bike to a stop and didn’t realize how tightly Poe had been gripping him until he had relaxed.

 

“Ranger Sloane, Ranger Dameron,” the one guard greeted them from underneath his helmet while two of his fellows kept their guns aimed at the street behind them. “Are the two of you alright? There have been a number of incidents at global Shatterdomes.”

 

“We’re fine,” he responded for both of them as Poe dismounted behind him, clearly preferring to walk on wobbly legs instead of staying on that bike for a moment longer. He should take it inside the gates though, as they were slowly opening to let them inside, so no one else could steal it before they had a chance to return it. “We were attacked, but we weren’t hurt.” He started to walk the bike in through the gates, into safety.

 

“Glad to hear it. P.P.D.C. says not all Rangers were so lucky.”

 

“Ranger Pava?”

 

“Shot, but conscious. She made it back to the Shatterdome on her own, so I don’t suspect its life threatening.” He nodded at the guard even as he thought that it would be a grave mistake to underestimate the First Order. He knew that they were responsible for the attacks just as certain as he knew that he was supposed to pilot with Poe. He left the bike just inside the door, and caught up to Poe who was making quick strides to the interior of the Shatterdome.

 

“We should check in with General Organa,” he said once Finn caught up with him. “Let her know that we’re all right.” The rest of the Rangers would likely be with her as well, and it was their best chance to get any new information. Like how the First Order had coordinated an attack on such a large scale, and why they thought taking out defenseless Rangers was the answer to all their problems.

 

A few questions for some on edge mechanics and maintenance workers informed them that General Organa was in Hangar One, along with Ranger Wexley, Ranger Pava and Rey. They stood in the shadow of _Snap Testor_ , or at least, three of them did. Jess was seated on a stretcher while a medic attempted to tend to a bleeding wound on her arm. She was alive, but she would not be piloting anytime soon. _Snap Testor_ would be temporarily decommissioned. Ranger Wexley had his arms wrapped protectively around Jess’s head, while she struggled to free herself while not interfering with what the medic was doing.

 

“Snap, I told you I’m fine,” he heard her mumble, but her struggles appeared to be half-hearted, and not just because she was being treated.

 

“Thank goodness the two of you are alright,” General Organa said when she saw them, and she immediately moved to embrace Poe. Rey threw her arms around him, pulling him close and burying her face temporarily in his shoulder. “When we heard that the two of you had gone into the city and Jess came back injured, we feared the worst for you.” She stepped away from Poe to appraise the two of them, and Rey reluctantly pulled away as well, although she did reach down to keep a firm grip on his hand.

 

“What do we know about the situation?” he asked General Organa with the assumption that she wouldn’t have much to go on yet. The attack was too recent, and the Shatterdomes were still probably accounting for all of their Rangers.

 

“That this was a coordinated attack against Rangers around the globe. Some are still unaccounted for. Many have been injured although a few did manage to fend off their attackers. Gavin Darklighter is the worst that we’ve accounted for. He’s in critical condition after receiving multiple gunshots to the torso.” Even if they only managed to take one of them out, they have been successful. It would be one less Jaegar to go out and fight the Kaiju.

 

“Has anyone taken credit for the attacks yet?” he asked, hoping to steer the conversation in the direction of the First Order. General Organa had to have known they were responsible for something like this. For months they had been spouting their nonsense about the failures of the Jaegars and the Rangers that piloted them.

 

“Not yet. Although the Hansen twins did manage to take their assailant alive and back to the Shatterdome with them. The P.P.D.C. is planning on sending a committee to interrogate the suspect.”

 

So because of all the red tape, they would be lucky if they got any information from that individual. In the meantime, they would be much better off assuming that the First Order was responsible and should react as such. Commander Antilles should be the one to make the official statement, given that his Shatterdome was hit the hardest.

 

“I need all Rangers to remain in the Shatterdome until further notice.” He doubted Jess would be going anywhere anytime soon unless Wexley decided to let go of her. Wexley would keep her there by force if necessary. They all acquiesced to her order in unison. He didn’t want to leave, and he didn’t want his friends to put themselves unnecessarily at risk either.

 

“Ranger Sloane, Ranger Dameron, _Snap Testor_ will not be deployed until Ranger Pava’s arm has healed. We need the two of you back in _Renegade Nova_.”

 

Whether or not Poe thought he was ready, the two of them were going to be drifting together again, probably a lot sooner than any one would like.

 

~*~*~

 

Drifting with Poe was still a sharp change from drifting with Rey, and even drifting with Poe now was different from the way it had been before. There was still some resistance, and Finn had never asked Ranger Wexley if he had also experienced that, but it wasn’t quite like a tumble into the ocean like he felt when he joined with Rey. It was more of a merging, a coming together of two units that had been designed to work together. There was no danger of getting lost in Poe’s mind, being dragged in by his memories until both of them were nothing more than a broken shell. That would never happen to them. They were equals, and one of them could not overpower the other.

 

He closed his eyes as the Pons entwined their neural networks, letting Poe’s experiences and memories wash over him like they had been his own. Poe would be experiencing his memories and knowledge as well, until they would both experience them simultaneously. His mother’s funeral. Moving his arm to control _Renegade Nova_ on his own so that he could save both of them. The long weeks of Poe being in medical, circumstances separating that which should have always stayed together. The two of them, lying in bed together, gently kissing.

 

That never happened.

 

“Neural handshake stabilized,” control announced and he had never been more grateful to have been interrupted. There was no telling how far that would have gone if he would have chosen to explore that further. “ _Renegade Nova_ is ready to deploy.”

 

They didn’t have time to think about that now. They had a Kaiju to fight.

 

~ *~*~

 

Secure and ready in her drivesuit, Rey paced at the back of the command room, watching the video feed they were receiving of _Renegade Nova’s_ battle against the Kaiju. General Organa stood at the front of the room, stock still with her arms folded across her chest as she carefully monitored both the activity and the strength of their neural handshake. Rey had never been in this room while someone was fighting before, and the strange circular display didn’t make much sense to her even though one of the support crew was staring at it intently.

 

General Organa had promised she would not go out in _Scavenger_ alone if they could afford it. Not until they had found her a proper teacher to show her what she was doing in a way that she couldn’t be injured. General Organa had also insisted that it would be easier if they could rebuild the rig for a single person, and also much safer for her, but she did not have the knowledge of how to make it work. Very few people did, and until they found one, she was stuck in the Shatterdome, watching as her friends fought a Kaiju that was too big.

 

“They need help,” she said, pushing her way forward until she was standing next to General Organa. How could she stand there so calmly when their Rangers were in danger? “Let me help them.”

 

“Los Cabos is already on route and will not be unswayed. They want to make up for not making it here in time when _Renegade Nova_ needed them the most.”

 

She watched as _Renegade Nova_ staggered under a particularly powerful blow from the Kaiju.

 

“They’ll never make it here in time this time either.”

 

General Organa put a comforting hand on her shoulder. “I know you’re worried about them. And if you would go down to the Hangar, you would find Ranger Wexley outside of _Snap Testor_ in his drivesuit, ready to go.”

 

“But Jess can’t pilot.”

 

“No, but you can.”

 

“Then I should go down there now so we can help them.” She turned quickly on her heel, but General Organa was faster than she gave her credit for and quickly had a tight grip on her upper arm.

 

“Rey, we’ll only send you out with Ranger Wexley as a last resort. If you’re not careful, you could burn someone out by drifting with them.” They had never warned her about that with Finn. They had recklessly thrown her into the Drift with Finn time after time and not once had someone warned her about that. Yet General Organa sounded like she was speaking from personal experience, and her brother had been like her. Able to pilot a Jaegar without any assistance. She had been doing some reading in her spare time, to learn more about the Jaegars and to possibly discover what had happened to Luke Skywalker in the intervening years since the Third Contact War. The name had been redacted, but when he had joined the war effort, he had had a copilot. What had happened to him that they didn’t want people to know who had piloted with Luke Skywalker? Was the individual still alive? She studied the General for a moment, wondering what would happen if the two of them would try to Drift together. Was General Organa the one who had piloted with Luke Skywalker and had she suffered lasting damage from it? She seemed to know a lot about the Jaegars and the Drift for someone who had never been a Ranger before.

 

Her thoughts were interrupted by new chatter coming over the intercom, chatter that she couldn’t translate. Los Cabos had arrived, and along with _Renegade Nova,_ was making quick work of the Kaiju. They weren’t going to need her and Ranger Wexley after all.

 

“Sounds like Ranger Sloane has picked up some Spanish,” one of the support staff informed General Organa in a condescending voice. It was the one who had been studying the overlay of the neural handshake. “You have to separate them and put Ranger Sloane back with the girl.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And I just put them back together, too. Although, I am excited to get back into Rey's perspective a little bit, and we will be seeing more of her perspective in upcoming chapters.


	13. Wake

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Rangers mourn their losses while Finn contemplates his choices and what it means to be a hero.

“We are gathered here today to honor the memory of Gavin Darklighter,” Commander Antilles announced from the central monitor in front of them. The audio would be broadcast to the rest of the Shatterdome so they could participate in a moment of silence as well. The conference room they stood in, along with all the other ones around the globe, were far more private. They had taken some heavy losses since he had become a Ranger: a few Rangers had been seriously injured, a few Jaegars had been decommissioned, but nothing could have prepared any of them for this. This was not death in the line of duty. This was the result of senseless violence.

“Gavin Darklighter had not been a Ranger long, but he showed as much promise as his cousin once had. He did not get the opportunity to die in a Jaegar where he belonged, but instead was gunned down in the street by a coward.”

To Finn’s right was Poe, and Finn briefly glanced over at him. Poe couldn’t seem to bring himself to look at the other Rangers and was looking at the junction of floor and wall instead. Finn didn’t even want to imagine what Darklighter’s copilot much be going through but having almost lost Poe himself, it was all he could think of. They had been lucky in San Francisco. General Organa stood on the other side of Poe, even more somber than him. She had talked about going to Anchorage in solidarity for Commander Antilles, but he had refused to let her come.

“We will overcome this tragedy. The world needs you Rangers now more than ever. You cannot be afraid. You all must continue to fight for Gavin, to show the First Order that you will not be intimidated.”

To his left, Rey, who was still learning how to pilot her Jaegar. Jess, her arm still in a sling from the same attack that had claimed Ranger Darklighter. Both Wexleys. Rangers all, and he shifted his attention to the other Shatterdomes. He recognized a handful of faces, some by reputation only and others he had personally met. Ranger and General Pentecost, both checking in from Hong Kong. The Hansen twins in Australia. Mirror Bright’s Rangers, the only two to be found in Honolulu. Commander Antilles who was rumored to have once piloted with The Luke Skywalker. They said that was when he had gotten the limp.

He chanced another glance over at General Organa. No one seemed to be questioning her presence there, even though other Generals of the P.P.D.C. were conspicuously absent. And General Pentecost and Commander Antilles were both former Rangers.

“Let us take a moment of silence to remember Ranger Gavin Darklighter, not as a victim, but as a hero who spent the last days of his young life defending people from the Kaiju.” He had never heard the Shatterdome so quiet before, like the silence echoed down the metal hallways and burrowed into their souls. It was almost like when he had been alone inside the Drift, reaching out for Poe and being unable to find him. He reached out for him now and grabbed his hand. Without thinking about it, he grabbed Rey’s hand with his other. They were both his copilots, and he wasn’t going to lose either of them. Not without a fight. “We will honor him with every Kaiju we defeat.”

“Thank you for that, Commander Antilles,” General Organa said before flipping the switch that was broadcasting the memorial to the rest of the Shatterdome. The memorial over, other Shatterdomes disconnected from the feed. One by one they screens went black til only Anchorage and Honolulu remained. “I had hoped this attack would have galvanized them to the cause,” General Organa said once they were the only Shatterdomes left. Her cause against the First Order that should have been a primary concern for all of them.

“They’re Rangers. They’re good at fighting Kaiju. Expecting them to voluntarily fight an enemy they can’t find on top of that is asking too much.”

“Excuse me,” Poe said quietly from beside him before silently exiting the room. Finn stared after him while the Senior officers continued.

“What the First Order did goes beyond sabotage. They deliberately attacked Rangers and put their lives in danger. They won’t be able to safely leave the Shatterdome until the First Order threat is eradicated.”

“I think some of the Rangers are willing to live with that if it means they continue to fight the Kaiju.”

They didn’t say it aloud, but he knew they were talking about Poe. At least they had the decency not to mention him by name even though he had left the room. General Organa had sent Poe on a top secret mission involving the First Order, and he had come back changed. He had come back unable to Drift until Finn had come along, and the other Rangers didn’t want to end up like him. He didn’t even bother to excuse himself as he followed Poe from the conference room. They weren’t going to get anywhere today, not with the support of only three Shatterdomes.

He had not gone far when he was joined by a young black woman holding a recording device. She matched his stride as he walked through the hallways. How had she even managed to get that far without supervision? Last he had heard, they had been screening reporters more vigorously in light of recent attacks.

“Ranger Sloane, do you have a few minutes to answer a couple of questions?”

“I just came from a funeral, so now isn’t a really good time.” Plus, he needed to check on Poe. He knew that look he had worn before he had left the room, and he knew Poe shouldn’t be alone even though he was sure to be joining BB-8 in their room.

“Could we maybe schedule another time to talk? I’ve jotted down a few questions I’d like to ask you.” He never knew when he was going to be available so he made it a point to never schedule anything. The Kaiju waited for nothing. “As a young bisexual black man who is a Ranger, you’re a real inspiration to a good number of people.”

“What?” He stopped in the hallway and turned to look at her. Perhaps it would be in everyone’s best interest if he did not inadvertently lead her to Poe.

“I’m sorry, are you not out yet?” It was such a ridiculous question that he didn’t even know how to answer it. Didn’t these people have anything better to do with their lives than to theorize about his sexuality? He thought about As The Tide Ebbs and came to the conclusion that there were people actually paid to think about it. “It’s just your ex from the Academy already sold her story, and given your current relationship with Ranger Dameron-”

“My relationship with Ranger Dameron is off limits.” He didn’t need nosy reporters confusing the situation any more than it already was. Poe liked to avoid conversations about anything intimate, but he knew better now than to think it was because Poe didn’t care for him.

“Alright, what about your relationship with the Scavenger girl? Or how you balance the two of them having drifted with both.” It was quite simple, really, but he didn’t expect her to understand. The secret was not to put them in competition with each other.

“Why don’t you talk to Ranger Wexley. His former and current copilot are both living inside the Shatterdome. I’m sure that will make for an interesting piece.”

“Please,” the reporter said with a snort. “The most interesting thing about Ranger Wexley is his fiancee.”

“She’s a black bisexual pilot. Two out of three is not bad. Why don’t you go write your story about her instead?” The best way to dismiss her would be to walk away and ignore her until she found another target.

“I will tell your story, Ranger Sloane,” she called after him, but she made no move to follow him. Good. She could bother someone else. There were plenty of other stories to be told in the Shatterdome. “There are a lot of people out there whose lives would be charged forever if they knew it.”

Maybe she would take his advice and talk to Kare instead. He was a Ranger, just like any other, and if she did a story on him, she would quickly become bored in the writing of it. He needed to talk to the security teams about letting reporters where they didn’t belong. Especially ones who started with questions about his identity as a bisexual black Ranger. 

It was just the Drift. He had told himself that a million times, even as their drift-bond had faded while Poe had been in medical. They shared headspace and their most intimate thoughts. A certain fondness was bound to grow from that connection. Jess was certainly fond of Ranger Wexley, and he was far from her type.

He stopped in the doorway to their room and leaned against the doorframe. Poe had returned and was in the process of feeding BB-8 some fruit. Perhaps he had not left because of the mention of the First Order. He was talking to the bird in Spanish, and maybe he would be able to pick up a few words if he really listened. However, he did not want to intrude, so for the moment, he was content to stand in the doorway and watch him.

It had to be the Drift. It could do strange things to a man. Like make him mistake simple fondness for something else. Except, he had never felt this way about Rey, and he had drifted with her far more than he had drifted with Poe. And that fantasy that had been exposed during their last drift together hadn’t come from Poe.

“Buddy, are you just going to stand there and watch me?” Poe asked him in English. How long had he been staring? Clearly he was not being as unobtrusive as he thought. “It’s getting weird.”

“Sorry,” he said, pushing himself away from the wall and moving into their room. “I was just thinking.”

“Don’t tell me,” Poe said as he gave the last fruit chunk to BB-8. “Whatever it is I’m sure I’ll find out during the next Kaiju attack.”

He slept in that room every night but had not paid much attention to the little details since they had moved in. His Renegade Nova jacket was hanging unworn in the closet while the Black One jacket was on the back of one of the chairs. BB-8 on his perch, a rope toy Rey had made for him hanging off the side. His made bed and Poe’s sheets as rumpled as when he had left them that morning. The bulletin board that he had thought would remain empty forever but Poe had apparently been filling up with clippings. He walked closer to really look at them now. They were newspaper clippings and magazine articles from the past couple of months. Some were about the two of them together. One was even a picture of the two of them from the press conference when their partnership had been announced, but the ones about him and Rey or just him far outnumbered those of him and Poe. There had to be something he could do about that.

“It’s not your fault you know,” he told Poe, turning around to look at him instead. “Gavin. Jess. All the others.” He knew it even if Poe wouldn’t admit to himself. Just like he still felt responsible about Poe’s arm. “The First Order did that, not you.”

“And if I had stopped them the first time General Organa had tasked me with it-”

“Then someone else would have taken their place. Someone always does. Your parents fought against the Kaiju while the so-called Empire was trying to consolidate power.”

“Someone else might have not shot Jess and Gavin or sabotaged the Jaegars,” Poe argued back as he moved past him to sit on the bed.

“Someone else might have done worse,” he tactfully said even though he was burning with a million questions. Like if the sabotaged Jaegars had anything to do with why they had stopped using the Mark Twenty Fives. And why Poe thought he had anything to do with it. Those were the questions General Organa would have him ask, but she wasn’t there, and she could ask for herself if she really wanted to know that badly.

“That doesn’t change the fact that Gavin is dead and Jess was shot.” Poe sighed as he hauled himself onto his bunk and sat on the edge of it. BB-8 chirped softly before flying over to join his master.

Finn crossed the small distance so he could lean his back up against the bunk next to Poe’s legs. “Maybe not. But Jess still adores you.” Actually, she hadn’t changed her behavior at all around Poe since the two of them had set aside their differences, but it still might cheer Poe up. They both needed to think about something besides the First Order, and being locked up inside the Shatterdomes was not going to help any one’s morale. “One of my exes from the Academy apparently sold her story to a tabloid. Maybe we could add it to the wall.” He was a little curious about what she had told them. Most likely a bunch of fabrications.

“Did she at least have nice things to say about you?”

“Don’t know. I just found out about it from a reporter on the way here.” A reporter who had been a little too curious about his relationship with Poe. Maybe he had gone through something similar before. No one ever talked about the downside to being a Ranger. Every facet of his personal life was now for sale to the highest bidder. “Did any of your exes ever sell something to the tabloids?”

“No, he never did,” Poe said quietly, and Finn was quick to take note of the singular. It must have been quite serious then, but he had never seen anything in the Drift. Unless that was the third voice that he occasionally heard with them, but if that were the case he figured Poe might actually be better off without the guy.

“What happened to him?”

“We wanted different things from life. I wanted to be a Ranger, and he thought it wasn’t a good idea. He was convinced I was going to die in my first year.” But Poe hadn’t died, he hadn’t gotten back together with his ex. And obviously they weren’t together now. And Poe had never mentioned him before, and he had never encountered any memories of the man inside the Drift. It was almost as if Poe didn’t want to think about him or talk about him. “I survived my first year. He did not. It was before the Hansen twins were piloting. He was visiting some family, second cousins or something like that when the Kaiju attacked.”

“I’m sorry, Poe.” He remembered that battle. As of last year, the Ranger Academy had still been using it to teach potential Jaegar pilots what not to do. With the human population already decimated, the tens of thousands of people they had lost that day had seemed staggering. He shouldn’t have asked Poe about it, shouldn’t have forced him to think about it. It couldn’t have been easy, having someone you loved die like that a world away.

“It was a long time ago,” Poe reassured him even though it did nothing to lift his spirits. “It gets easier with time. New people come into your life, and eventually it doesn’t hurt so much anymore.”

“We can’t save them all, can we?” All those people still living in San Francisco, too poor to go anywhere else. The mechanic who had given them restaurant suggestions. The host of the small establishment they had gone to. They couldn’t even go back to make amends for not even getting to try any of the food. The person who’s motorcycle he had stolen. They were all counting on them to protect them from the Kaiju, to keep the Kaiju from ever getting to land.

“No, we can’t.” All those people counting on them, and that reporter wanted to make him out to be some sort of hero. “But you’re one of the best Rangers of your generation. A lot more of them will be safe because of you.”

“Because of us,” he corrected Poe out of habit. He wasn’t like Rey, piloting solo. There were two of them in that Jaegar. There were two of them keeping the people of San Francisco alive. Two of them, not just him alone. No matter what that reporter thought or what Poe’s news board seemed to suggest. He wasn’t the only one out there risking his life. “I don’t know if I can do this,” he said. BB-8 gave a soft chirp before coming over to land on his shoulder.

“You spent all those years at the Ranger Academy training for this. It’s a little late for you to be rethinking your career choice.”

“Not that.” Never that. He felt at home inside a Jaegar, and as far as his partnership with Poe went, well, he wasn’t sure he would trade that for anything. Not even if it meant sealing both breaches. “This hero stuff. I don’t think I can be the hero the world wants me to be.”

“You save people’s lives every day. You’re already a hero.” Poe put his hand lightly on his shoulder.

In that sense, he supposed they were all heroes, but it seemed like everyone wanted something more from him. Just a little more heroism that they could squeeze out of him. General Organa thought he could solve her First Order problem. Jess thought he had the capacity to pilot by himself and was just holding out on them. Rey looked at him like he had single handedly pulled her from a life of loneliness in the wasteland. He was the one who had pulled Poe out of retirement and gave him another chance to fight the Kaiju. And that reporter on the way there thought he was some sort of inspiration to all the black bisexual children out there. It was a lot of pressure. All he wanted to do was keep the Kaiju from breaching land. He had never asked for any of this extra stuff.

“Not all Rangers have to deal with all of this,” he said, like Poe had someway of knowing everything that had just gone on in his head. Maybe he did. Maybe he had picked up on all that pressure and stress from the Drift and had just been tactful enough not to say anything. “When I was on the way here, a reporter wanted to know what it was like to be a black bisexual Ranger.” There. Better to let everything out in the open. Not that he had been trying to hide it from Poe, but he hadn’t really thought about it too much. Not before he had met Poe at any rate. There had always been more important things to worry about, like staying alive, keeping innocent civilians alive.

“What did you tell that reporter?” Poe asked him quietly as his hand fell slowly from his shoulder.

“I tried to convince her that she would get a better story about Kare.”

“You’ll get used to the reporters and constant speculation about your personal life,” Poe reassured him.

“I hope so.” Sooner, rather than later, would be nice. Now if he could sort out his personal relationships on his own without any outside influence, that would be even better.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have everything planned out, and a schedule that if I stick to it, will see this ending before The Last Jedi comes out. That's my plan. Stay tuned next chapter for a major turning point.


	14. Symbiosis

It had been a grueling fourteen hours inside Renegade Nova fighting back the Kaiju, but they had managed to keep it from the shore. But that had been fourteen hours being linked to Poe in the most intimate way possible. It had hurt to be separated from him once the Jaegar had been safely docked back in the Shatterdome. They had been greeted by medical and psychological personal inside the cockpit, but he had momentarily blacked out when they had disconnected them from the Drift.

When he came to, he was on his back on a stretcher, tied down and covered securely with a blanket. Something was missing from inside of him, and the only way to get it back was to find Poe. Since he couldn’t get up, and he wasn’t sure how well his limbs would have responded to him at the moment, he tossed his head from side to side in search of his copilot. Just the guy pushing him and one of the psych staff holding a clipboard. “Poe,” he croaked out when he finally remembered how his vocal cords worked. He had hoped to get out more, but he just had to hope they understood what he meant.

“Poe’s fine,” the woman assured him as they continued down the hall. “He’s with one of the other experts being evaluated right now.”

“I want to see him.” No, he didn’t want to see him; he needed to see him. He needed to get as close to him as he possibly could to reestablish that connection that had been so recently severed. They were supposed to be together.

“Not right now,” the woman told him. He was wheeled into a room and the straps on the stretcher were loosed. “You were joined with Poe in the Drift for a long time.” She obviously did not think him to be a flight risk or else she would not have let him up. “Keep that blanket on,” she advised him as he struggled to sit up. He couldn’t even go looking for Poe and was completely at her mercy. “The two of you need to undergo separate evaluations to make sure there was no lasting damage.”

The rational part of him agreed that it was the wiser course of action. But the rational part of him wasn’t very loud at the moment. Fourteen hours inside the Drift had whittled him down to pure instinct. And right now his instinct was to find Poe so they could merge again. So they could be one. And thoughts like that were exactly why he was here in a psych evaluation instead of being allowed unsupervised into the Shatterdome. For his own safety. It could drive a person mad, and had before. He could stay here for now. Not that he trusted his legs to get him very far at the moment.

“Alright. What do you want me to do?” Poe was in good hands somewhere. This wasn’t like the last time.

“We’ll start with a few simple questions,” she said, sitting down in a chair across from him. “What’s your name?”

“Finnick Dameron.” Damn. That was what they were trying to make sure wasn’t happening to him. He would never get out of here at this rate. “Finnick Sloane,” he tried again. Yes, that was right.

“Where were you born?”

“In Philadelphia Pennsylvania.” He answered slowly, unwilling to get another wrong answer. She would keep him in there forever if she thought it necessary.

“And who are your parents?” she asked as she made a note on her clipboard.

“My mother is Admiral Rae Sloan of the United Navy. And my father is Tenira.”

“Is that the answer you’re going with?”

“He raised me with my mother, so yes. He is my father.”

He didn’t know if that was the right answer, but she made another note on her clipboard.

He thought the questioning would never end. She grilled him about aspects of his life that he had nearly forgotten about. Some of her questions were deliberately misleading, and he was certain the information must have come from Poe’s file. To make sure they had been fully separated when they had come out of the Drift. A necessary precaution, but there was a humming in his veins that no amount of questioning could quench. At some point during the interrogation, the blanket had fallen to the ground, but he didn’t feel like he needed it anymore. What he needed was Poe.

Eventually, she deemed him mentally fit to go about his daily business. He had answered her questions correctly and lucidly, and he had managed to keep himself from asking about Poe every other time he answered. He still felt like all his senses were finely attuned like he had gained a greater understanding of the universe. Like everything was falling into place. Every little sound echoed inside of him as he made his way swiftly to his room. He was certain that it was the first place Poe would go when he was released from his psych evaluation like he had never been sure of anything in his life before.

BB-8 was the only occupant when he arrived in the room. Disappointing, but he had waited this long, he could wait a little longer. He moved to sit on the edge of the bed with his hands clasped between his knees. What was he even going to say to him? Would he need to say anything at all? They had just spent the last fourteen hours psychically connected to one another, sharing every thought and every feeling. He knew more about Poe than he ever had known about any other person. Knew what he thought about sometimes when they were not together. Knew how much more it had hurt when he had replaced him with Rey compared to when Wexley had replaced him with Jess. Knew that Poe was far too aware of the difference in their ages to ever make the first move.

There were ways to get around that. In his case, he figured the best approach might be the direct approach. If he wasn’t one hundred percent transparent about his feelings with Poe, Poe might just blow it off as his imagination. He had certainly done enough of that himself. Right now, having spent so long in Poe’s brain, the feel of being connected to him still thrumming through his veins and the scent of him still fresh, he didn’t understand why he had tried so damned hard to convince himself that it was only the Drift. Now, if only he could do something about that bird. Poe would be upset with him if he tried to put it to bed early which would be counterproductive to his plans. Still, it would be awkward and uncomfortable if he found the bird watching him.

Enough about the bird. He still needed to figure out what to say when Poe came back to their room. I like you a lot more than just a copilot and I know you feel the same way? If given the opportunity to deny it, Poe would probably take it. Not that he could really hide what was in his thoughts when he was in the Drift, but outside the Jaegar, Poe was a lot more evasive about his feelings. Like he was afraid of getting close to someone again. Like he was afraid of not measuring up, of letting people down again.

“Looks like they decided we were separate,” Poe said as he stepped into their room, and when Finn looked up at him, he knew exactly what he needed to do.

He quickly crossed the room and kissed Poe, twisting his hands into the front of his shirt. Poe’s mouth was dry from the long hours inside the Jaegar, and he had more than a little stubble, but Finn leaned further into him. He needed that contact, needed to feel the length of Poe’s body against his own. And that damned shirt was getting in the way. He craved that skin on skin contact, and that shirt and his own needed to go.

He pulled away form him long enough to fumble at the bottom of Poe’s shirt. A firm grasp on his wrist prevented him from getting very far with it.

“Buddy,” Poe said a bit breathlessly. Maybe it was the kiss or maybe it was the fourteen hours fighting a giant monster, but Finn had never been so turned on by a single word before. He didn’t know if Poe wanted to them to slow down or to stop altogether, but he waited patiently while Poe caught his breath and his thoughts. His eyelashes were so mesmerizing, he would be satisfied with just staring at him for the next several hours. No matter how much he wanted to regain that contact they had lost, he wouldn’t press the issue if Poe was not one hundred percent on board.

Finn didn’t have long to ponder the issue before Poe was tugging at the bottom of Finn’s shirt, pulling it deftly over his head. With a grin and a low chuckle, he leaned in to kiss Poe again, pressing up against him so there was not an inch of space between their bodies. Everything else just melted away until it was just the two of them, just like it was inside the Drift. He slowly started maneuvering them towards the bunk, which had to be more comfortable than the door Poe was currently pushed into.

Somewhere along the way, Finn finally managed to get Poe’s shirt off. He kept his hands just above Poe’s waistband, pulling him relentlessly closer while he pulled both of them to the lower bunk. All their other offensive articles of clothing would have to go too.

It was several hours later before they finally drifted apart, when Poe rolled out of the bed, leaving nothing behind but a rapidly cooling spot.

“I’m going to take a shower,” Poe said as he sat up on the edge of the bed, but he might as well have been talking to the bird for all the more he looked at him.

“I could join you,” he offered, propping himself up on one elbow. He was going to need one anyway. He probably reeked of seventeen hour old sweat, and it would save on water if they showered together.

“No, I prefer to shower alone,” Poe said before getting up and making his way not quite swiftly but definitely not leisurely into their bathroom and shutting the door firmly behind him.

Which left him feeling more isolated than he ever had in his entire life and wondering exactly what he had done wrong.

~*~*~*

The next couple of days were worse than he could have ever imagined. Sure, there were no Kaiju attacks, no sign of any type of Rift activity, and the First Order had been blessedly quiet. Poe, however, had been doing his best to avoid him and must have somehow recruited General Organa in his endeavor. Spurred by the lack of other Rangers stepping forward, all she wanted to do was talk to talk about the First Order with him. Where their main base might be located, what their next attack might be. How much time did they have before they lost someone else? When he wasn’t training, he was usually in a meeting with her. Not that they weren’t doing important work, but she didn’t have any new leads, and the stale information was just frustrating both of them.

Once, only once, he wanted to ask her to see the file that had been compiled on Poe’s failed mission to infiltrate the First Order. Maybe there was a clue in there that a fresh pair of eyes would be able to exploit. Expect he no longer wanted to know. Whatever had happened to Poe on that excursion was only for Poe to tell him when he was ready. Or to bleed over during the Drift, but so far they had managed to avoid that rabbit hole.

Right now, he just wanted Poe to have a real conversation with him before they next time they drifted. Except, he didn’t think it was a proper conversation to be having at the dinner table with Rey, Jess, and Wexley with them. Not that he could have even tried. Poe had sat down on the other side of Rey and was locked in conversation with one of the technicians. Rey and Jess were talking excitedly across the table which left him staring at Wexley. Would it be rude of him to try to strike up a conversation with the person at the next table?

“I’ve got a meeting with General Organa,” Poe said as he stood up from the table, tray in hand. “I’ll see you later, buddy,” Poe said as he walked past him.

“Sure,” he said, even thought he knew Poe wasn’t waiting for a response from him. Likely he wouldn’t see him until after it was time for them to turn in. And Poe had been conveniently asleep by the time he arrived in their room and somehow now managed to get up before him.

“Am I sensing some tension with you two?” Wexley asked him once Poe was gone.

“Just a little,” he said as he slumped further over the table. He didn’t really want to air his business to the entire Shatterdome, but he didn’t know how to fix it without being able to talk to Poe.

“Let me tell you something. Rangers are some of the few people in the world who have pets. My whole life, I wanted a cat. So, when I became a Ranger, the first thing I was going to do was finally get a cat. Instead, my first copilot had a bird, and my second one has a Chinchilla.”

“So?” He shouldn’t be so cranky with him. It wasn’t Wexley’s fault he didn’t know what was going on with Poe.

“So can you ask Jess if she would be willing to get rid of the Chinchilla?”

Finn thought the girls hadn’t been paying attention to their conversation, but Jess elbowed her copilot soundly in the ribs. Wexley wouldn’t ask her to get rid of the Chinchilla anyway, no more more than he would ask Poe to get rid of the bird.

“The thing is, being a Ranger about compromise. Just because once a month or so you share a mind doesn’t mean things are always going to be perfect.

“So what am I supposed to do when Poe won’t even talk to me?”

“I think you know the answer to that better than I do.”

The same way he had gotten Poe to Drift with him. Time. Patience. Respect. The second two would be easy. He just wasn’t sure how much time the Kaiju or the First Order would afford them.


	15. Contact

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Still uncertain about the status of their relationship, Poe and Finn are unable to Drift during the latest Kaiju attack. Needing a distraction and to still be useful, Finn goes to meet a contact of Leia's. He'll get no help from the P.P.D.C, and no one is supposed to know where he's gone, but he's not alone.

“I’m sorry about earlier,” he said to General Organa, sitting in her office in a stiff backed chair across from her desk while she looked through her paperwork. She did not call him in there to discipline him for their earlier failure. If that had been her intent, Poe would have been there alongside of him. Still, her silence was deafening, and he needed to say something. She had given him no indication of why she had really called him into her office, and he was starting to sweat. 

“I did not bring you here to discuss your inability to Drift with Ranger Dameron,” she said without looking up at him. They had been lucky they were only supposed to be backup and that the Kaiju had angled more towards Seattle. Anchorage had lent its support, and they hadn’t been needed after all. “I’m just grateful that Rey was here to pilot with Wexley in case that Kaiju would have changed course.”

And he was certain that Jess was never going to forgive him for that. There were certain things Wexley was privy to that Jess did not want shared with Rey. At least, not if she wasn’t going to be the one revealing them. He would have to make that one up to her later.

“We won’t let you down next time,” he assured her even though he didn’t know how he was going to keep that promise. He had been so fixated on his problems with Poe that he had been unable to drift with him. This was exactly why they advised Rangers against getting involved with each other, even though a large number of them did it anyway.

“I have no doubt you and Ranger Dameron will be ready to go the next time a Kaiju comes through.” She remained calm and businesslike, so she must not have been as upset about his failure to perform as he had thought she was going to be. So there was only one other reason why she would have called him into her office.

“Have you had any news about the First Order?” he asked, leaning forward in his seat. That was something he could focus on, something to divert his attention away from figuring out how to mend his relationship with Poe. And since they had failed in Renegade Nova, fighting the First Order would remind him that he was making a difference.

“We’ve had contact with someone who might have some information.” She handed the file she was looking at over to him. There wasn’t much information to go on. A code name. A location where they could meet him or her if they wanted to learn more. It was a little bit inland, in a small town he hadn’t heard of before. Maybe about fifty miles past the edge of the Graveyard. “The trouble is, our contact is in a bit of a financial bind and requires our assistance.”

“Of course,” he said, tossing the file back onto the desk between them. Nobody would give them that information for free. And it wasn’t like the P.P.D.C. was offering them funds for General Organa to pursue her objective. He couldn’t get money from his family, and he didn’t know how much of her personal finances, but there could not be much left after fighting through two Kaiju wars. Most of the funding for the Guatemalan Shatterdome had come from her private funds after the P.P.D.C. had joined forces with the “Empire” and declared the Jaegars obsolete. “How much money are we talking?”

“We couldn’t get that information before we lost the connection. We need to send someone in to collect the information and our contact if necessary.”

“I suppose you would like me to go in?” It might take him away from the Shatterdome for a few days. If they were lucky, he would be back before the next Kaiju attack. If he wasn’t, well, he hadn’t exactly been much help this last time. It would give him and Poe time apart as well, time to think.

“Technically, you just volunteered,” she said as she took the file away from him and locked it in the bottom drawer of her desk. “This conversation never happened. Officially, you will be taking a leave of absence to recuperate after your failure to Drift. Once you’re out there, you will be on your own. I won’t be able to offer you any assistance. Some of the people you encounter might recognize you and they might be dangerous.”

“I understand.”

“If you think it’s not worth the risk, speak up now. Otherwise you have until fifteen hundred hours to say your goodbyes and get your things together.”

“That’s not a lot of time.”

“It’s not like the Kaiju afford you more. Besides, it gives you less time to accidentally tell someone where you are going.” She still believed someone inside the Shatterdome would betray them to the First Order; she might be right about that. Sympathizers could be anywhere.

“I won’t lie to Poe.” Poe would not betray them, not after what the First Order did to him.

“No one is asking you to,” General Organa informed him. “But I would be careful how much you reveal. If you’re not careful, he might just come chasing after you.”

“I doubt that.” Maybe once he would have believed it, but not anymore. At least, not until they could mend the new rift between them. “May I be excused? I need to start packing.”

“Dismissed,” she said with a nod of her head towards the door. “And Finn?” she called after him, making him pause in the door. “Good luck out there.”

“Thank you, General.”

He quickly made his way back to the dorms, tallying everything he needed to do before he left. He would need to pack an overnight bag with at least a few changes of clothes and the essentials. A burner phone. A first aid kit. A pistol would have been nice given the territory he was headed into, but since he was officially leaving to take a mental siesta, he didn’t think he would be able to procure one of those. He needed to say his goodbyes to people who would notice his absence. Norra, Sinjir, Jess, Rey. And Poe. Which he needed to start with since it was probably going to take the longest. There was, of course, always the possibility that he was not going to make it back alive. Poe would understand that much, even if he didn’t understand why he had to do it. Somewhere in there was the old Poe who had made that decision once before, and maybe he would understand.

He didn’t know if it was luck or a curse that had Poe in the room already when he arrived to pack his bag. At least he wouldn’t have to go looking for him, but he wasn’t ready for this conversation yet either.

“Does General Organa want to see me?” Poe asked from where he was seated at their shared desk.

“No, only me,” he said as he made his way over to the closet and pulled out the duffel bag that had come with him from the Ranger Academy.

“What’s with the bag?” Poe asked, scrapping the chair back as he stood up. “Did General Organa suspend you? I’ll go to her and tell her it was my fault so you can continue to pilot with Rey.”

“She didn’t suspend me,” he said as he quickly shoved some stuff into his duffel. This was a conversation they needed to have face to face, and he braced himself for the protest as he turned around slowly. “We have a new lead on the First Order. I’m going to meet our contact and hopefully find out where they’re located.” He could see the realization setting in on Poe’s face, but this was something that needed to be done. “I don’t know when I’m going to be back.”

“Buddy, you can’t go there,” Poe said moving closer to him, and for a moment he thought Poe was going to touch him. “You have no idea what they’ll do to you if they catch you.” 

All he needed was one good reason to stay and that wasn’t it. His whole body longed for Poe to say it. “No, I don’t.” All he needed was for Poe to ask him to stay, and he might just consider it. Just if Poe could say the words instead of begging him with his eyes. “But I can’t stand by and let it happen to someone else.” Not if he had the chance to change it. They were wrong when they said he wouldn’t be able to make a difference as a Ranger. “I’ll be back for you,” he promised, placing his hand on Poe’s shoulder. There was so much more that he wanted to tell him, but now wasn’t the right time. It might never be the right time. But he didn’t want to burden Poe with the knowledge in case he didn’t return. He could tell Poe when he came back.

He squeezed Poe’s shoulder before turning to walk out of the room. Part of him wished Poe would call him back and ask him to stay. It was a good thing he didn’t give that portion of himself much weight. He didn’t think he would be able to handle the disappointment. 

The rest of his goodbyes went by in a blur. Sinjir might have known something was up but didn’t comment on it. Jess gave him a tight hug and wished him well. Some other people were visited and other things were said, but all he could think of was Poe’s face when he had turned to walk away. 

It was time for him to leave, but he still hadn’t found Rey. He couldn’t leave without saying goodbye to her, but General Organa had been very specific about when he was to go. Maybe he could convince the pilot to give him five more minutes so he could say goodbye. He stumbled onto the airfield, still somewhat in a fog. Kare was waiting for him, and she gestured him over to where she waited outside a small plane. 

“It’s about time you got here,” she said as he made his approach. “One more minute, and I would have had to inform the General that you were tardy.”

“Does Poe know that you’re doing this?” Of course General Organa would have had to have a pilot involved, or someone else to give him transportation. He just hadn’t expected her pilot of choice would hit so close to home.

“No, and I would like to keep it that way. So you should board the plane before he figures out we disappeared at the same time. You better come back, too, or else he’ll never forgive me.”

“I have to find Rey first.” He couldn’t leave without saying goodbye. She would understand what he needed her to do if he didn’t come back. “We can’t leave until I’ve talked to her first.”

“There you are!” Rey called like she had been looking for him, and miraculously, she was calling to him from the ramp to the plane. “I was just about to tell Kare we should leave without you!” 

“The two of you can do plenty of talking once we’re in the air.” Kare clapped him on the shoulder before getting into the plane, and he had little choice but to follow them and hope he could get answers later.

~*~*~

“Did General Organa ask you to come with me?” Finn asked once they were in the air and there was no turning back for them. 

“No, she doesn’t even know I’m here.” If she would have asked for permission, she would have been denied. She was considered too valuable an asset at the Shatterdome, especially now that Jess was out of commission. But this was something she had to check for herself. It might be a monster of her own unwitting creation, and she needed to deal with it. “Once I knew Kare was involved in the fight against the First Order, I asked her to keep me informed.”

“This is too dangerous for you,” Finn told her. She understood the sentiment; as long as she was around, San Francisco always had one working Jaegar. Still, she didn’t like hearing it from him.

“You need me,” she told him flatly. “I’ve dealt with people like this before.” The contacts were different, but it couldn’t be much different from the black market she used to sell to.

“Who’s going to defend San Francisco if a Kaiju attacks while we’re gone?” he asked, leaning across the empty space towards her. He clearly had not thought about that himself before he agreed to this mission. He was needed to pilot with Poe.

“General Organa is a resourceful woman. I’m sure she’ll think of something.” How much could she reveal to him before she started to think she was overreacting? She didn’t have any proof, just a gut instinct from her last conversation with her usual contact. “I think the First Order is planning some thing much bigger than the General realizes.”

“Something bigger than shooting Rangers in the streets?” he asked and she nodded.

“Much bigger. Jaegar bigger.”

“Jaegar? You think they’re building their own Jaegar?”

“Before I moved into the Shatterdome, my contact was really interested in procuring working Jaegar tech.” Maybe she was wrong, but she still had to know and stop them if necessary. There was no way they were building a Jaegar for the good of humanity.

He leaned back in his seat, and she could see he was concentrating on the information she had given him. “Who would pilot such a thing for them?” 

She didn’t want to give him an answer to that. The obvious answer would be disillusioned Rangers. Or people who had shown promise but had not been given assignments. People who once believed in the dream but now thought fighting the Kaiju was futile. They didn’t talk more on the rest of the flight, but she didn’t know what they would have said to each other. She wondered if he missed Poe yet, like he had when Poe had been in medical, that hollow feeling that had echoed in her chest for days after the had drifted. She was almost grateful that she did not require a Drift partner. It was much easier when you knew your partner was only temporary. It kept her from getting too attached to any of them.

“I’ll be back for you in exactly seventy two hours,” Kare informed them as she unloaded them at a small airfield about an hour’s walk from their destination. “That should give you enough time to find your contact, get the information you might need, and get back here.”

“What happens if we’re not back in seventy-two hours?” Finn asked as he shouldered his bag.

“Then you’ll have to find your own way back to the Shatterdome.” That sounded promising. “Good luck to both of you.” She gave them both a sharp salute before getting back into the plane.

Just like that, they were on their own. There would be no assistance from the P.P.D.C. The wind had a bit of dust to it as it tried to pull her hair loose from it’s ponytail. It felt just like when she was living in the Graveyard, the fresh air, the wide open spaces. It should have felt like going home, but instead she longed to be back inside the comforting metal of the Shatterdome. And she missed the people. God, she missed the people. At least she had Finn with her this time. And in a way, since they had drifted together, she supposed now she would never have to be alone again. She reached over to give his hand a gentle squeeze.

“Come on. Let’s go find General Organa’s contact, fix whatever trouble he or she is in, and get you back to Poe.”

“I wasn’t thinking about Poe,” he protested as she lead him away from the airfield. He probably didn’t realize that the whole Shatterdome could tell when he was thinking about Poe because he got this soft, dreamy look on his face. She wasn’t about to tell him and ruin everyone else’s fun in the process.

She dropped his hand about ten minutes into their walk. It was just too hot and she had been spoiled by air conditioning. They had talked and joked for a while, but eventually it got too hot for her to do that as well. She wondered if they had enough money for a cheap hotel room so she could wash the sweat and dirt off of her. She couldn’t go back to the Shatterdome looking like this. What would the other Rangers think of her if they came back covered in dirt and grime? They would probably just be glad that they had come back at all. She had not had the luxury of saying goodbye. Instead she had to rely on giving Kare a note to be passed along when she got back. And she really did want to get back.

“I hope our contact has some good information,” she snapped when the sun was starting to get unbearable. 

“I think we’re about to find out,” Finn said, pointing to a building on their left. It was a little run down, she could smell the cigarette smoke from the street, and three of the letters were missing from the word cantina. But that was the right place.

She made her way inside with Finn close behind her and quickly scanned the patrons. Most of them were the typical ne’er do wells you would expect, but there was one seated apart from the others that caught her attention. She smacked Finn’s chest with the back of her hand. “Is that Han Solo the Smuggler?” she whispered, gesturing to the man in the corner.

“No, that’s Han Solo the Ranger,” he corrected her. Titles would have to be worked out later, because remarkably, he stood up and approached them. She backed into Finn, not sure how to react that he had acknowledged them. He had to be walking past them or have mistaken them for someone else.

“Please tell me one of you is the Ranger Leia was sending to help me out.”


	16. Han Solo

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rey and Finn get a new lead on the First Order.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know I promised more regular updates, and it has been months. A lot of stuff happened. My cat died suddenly. The Last Jedi turned out to be incredibly underwhelming. But I still have all my notes for this, and I'm determined to finish it, even if it takes me until Episode IX. WIPweek over on tumblr gave me the kick in the butt I needed to get this updated. I originally intended to get two chapters done this week, but that was just too much.

Neither one of them responded for a moment, Rey leaning back against him. He should have been used to it by now. He had met plenty of famous Rangers. His copilot was Poe Dameron. But this was Han Solo. The Ranger who had piloted the Millennium Falcon. The Jaegar that served as Scavenger’s cockpit. No one had ever discovered who his copilot had been. The mystery was so deep that some had started to speculate that he had no partner. Whatever Rey had heard about him, she was struck just as silent as he was.

 

“Well?” Han Solo prompted them after they had been staring at him for what was likely an inappropriate amount of time. “I haven’t had access to a TV in a while. Which one of you is the Ranger?”

 

“We both are,” Finn volunteered for both of them. He didn’t like how insistent this man was being on a Ranger being there when he had been one himself. Whatever he needed a Ranger for, it could not have been good.

 

“Wonderful. What do you pilot?” he asked, looking back and forth between the two of them. “Tell me something that even someone out here would have heard of.”

 

“Renegade Nova.” People weren’t supposed to know about Scavenger and Rey even though certain corners of the news still entertained their conspiracy theories. That Scavenger was a new Mark Twenty-Seven that had been tested once and deemed not field worthy yet. That the mystery pilots had died shortly after that first mission.

 

“Renegade Nova? Did Leia come up with that name?”

 

Maybe no one out here had a television, and General Organa would have been better served to send a hero from the Second Contact War.

 

“What about you?” Han Solo asked, looking at Rey. “What do you pilot?  


“Mostly Renegade Nova with him.”

 

“Mostly?”

 

“Rey’s been training to copilot Snap Testor in Ranger Pava’s absence,” he said before Rey could say something to endanger them. He didn’t think this was the best place to be talking about them being Rangers, let alone if someone here figured out Rey could pilot solo. “Is there some place else we can talk about this?” he asked, jerking his head to indicate the other patrons who had given up all pretense of not listening to them and were leaning forward in their seats.

 

“These people are mostly harmless.” Even mostly harmless could be provoked if they thought there was money to be had. “but the sooner we take care of my problem, the sooner we can get this information back to Leia.” Han Solo lead the way as they stepped back out into the dusty streets.

 

“What’s the problem?” Rey asked as they followed the brisk pace he set. It was far too hot to be moving that quickly, but Solo moved like a man on a mission. Maybe he really did have information that would help them stop the First Order before anyone else could get hurt.

 

“My vehicle has been impounded by a criminal, along with all the information that I’ve gathered on the First Order.”

 

“General Organa didn’t send any money with us.”

 

“She wouldn’t. She always hated that vehicle.”

 

Finn was starting to get the feeling that there was a lot more to this story than General Organa had told him. Far more than had been in the file at any rate, and he wondered if Rey had known any of this.

 

“So what do you need us for?”

 

“The guy who runs the impound lot is a bit of a Ranger junkie, but he never gets into the city to meet any of you.”

 

“You think he’s going to give you your vehicle back for an autograph and a couple photos?”

 

Han Solo laughed. “No, Unkar Plutt is a blood sucking leech who will accept nothing less than the ten thousand dollars he claims I owe him.”

 

“What do you need us for then?” They didn’t have ten thousand dollars, and they couldn’t sell that much just by selling autographs in the time frame that General Organa had given them. This trip wasn’t worth the trouble.

 

“I need the two of you to distract him while I sneak in and get what we need.”

 

“One of us should go with you,” he suggested. Just because the man had once been a Ranger did not mean he was honorable, and they had no way of knowing who was or was not a First Order sympathizer. “In case this Plutt fellow decides he wants to keep a Ranger around permanently.”

 

He started to smell something like if the Shatterdome had started to rust, burning his lungs on the dry air, but it wasn’t until they reached the top of the next rise that he discovered the source. Miles upon miles of twisted, broken metal stretched out in front of them. He recognized pieces of cars, boats, and even Jaegars.

 

“How are we supposed to find your vehicle in that mess?”

 

“I may have tipped him off that there was something valuable in it when I was so desperate to get it back. He’ll keep it close to his office.”

 

“How do we know that they didn’t already take whatever we need?” Rey asked from beside him, staring out at the field in wonder. He didn’t need the drift to know what she was thinking. She could build so many marvelous things with all that scrap, and it was just sitting there, wasting away in some junk lord’s scrap yard.

 

“Because they don’t know what they’re looking for.” He was starting to be a bit skeptical about the whole thing, but their mission was clear. They were supposed to assist Han Solo and return him and the information he had gathered back to the Shatterdome.

 

“The girl can go distract Plutt while the two of us sneak into the compound and get what we need.”

 

“Rey,” she said from beside him, and Solo glanced over at the two of them. He didn’t know if he was comfortable with her going to meet this Plutt fellow on her own when there was no telling what sort of man he was. “My name is Rey. And I think I can give you about twenty minutes,” she said before she started making her ways towards the gated entrance.

 

Calling her back would only draw attention to all of them, and they probably had pictures of Solo’s face plastered all over the place just in case he tried to pull a stunt like this one. Rey could more than handle herself among the Kaiju, she was more than capable of taking care of junkrats. She had experience from her time in the Graveyard.

 

“Come on, kid,” Han Solo told him as he started in the other direction. “I know where there’s a weak spot in the fence.”

 

He kept low as he followed Han Solo along the length of chain link fence. Nothing in Ranger Academy had prepared him for something like this, following a legend into an illegal activity to steal back property that rightly belonged to the P.P.D.C. How would Rey distract Plutt? Perhaps she would pretend to be a prospective buyer, looking for part to finish up her Scavenger. Han Solo stopped at a place where the fence had been cut low to the ground, just big enough for someone of a smaller stature to fit through. Han Solo went through first, and after looking around to make sure that no one had spotted them yet, Finn followed him.

 

“How did you know that opening was there?” he asked once they were both safely inside.

 

“Some of the local kids like to sneak in here to play pranks on Plutt. Let’s get that information before Plutt loses interest in Rey.”

 

Solo made his way through the field of debris like he knew exactly where he was going instead of navigating a treacherous maze of broken cars and decaying metal. He spied the familiar black and red motiff on one of the Jaegar parts. The graveyard was supposed to be their final resting place, not so they could be taken apart and sold to the highest bidder. He wondered if any of Black One was left in the Graveyard, then hurried to catch up with Han Solo, who didn’t care to stop for his sightseeing.

 

“There she is,” Solo said with the grin of a man who was coming home. Finn looked at the old, battered incredibly dusty RV with one headlight and uneven tire pressure and immediately realized why the General did not care for the vehicle. Had Han tried to get her to move in there with him? Then again, she could hardly run the Shatterdome from on the road, especially now that the Kaiju were on the rise.

 

Still, Finn followed Solo as he jogged the rest of the way and let himself inside. Finn took another quick look around to make sure no one had followed them before shutting the door behind him. If possible, the inside was even worse than the outside. There were papers strewn over every working surface, and the whole place was one corkboard with thread paths away from being a conspiracy nuts dream palace. A series of numbers on the wall next to the computer caught his eye, and he pulled out his phone to take a quick photo. Solo was in the bedroom, and from the sound of things he was pulling panels off the wall. There was not enough room for the two of them back there, so Finn took the time to look around at the stacks of paper out in his area. Some of them were stained, and a lot of them didn’t make sense at a first glance. He could have spent days trying to figure out the code and would likely never know what any of it meant. He made his way over to the desk and started leafing through some of the pages. Some of it might be important that only a second pair of eyes would be able to decipher. They didn’t have the means to carry it all out of there, however, not unless they found a way to get the entire vehicle out. He didn’t think the RV would survive a direct assault against the miles of fence.

 

A photo about twenty pages down caught his eye, and he recognized the General from the small sliver that was visible to him. He checked back over his shoulder, but Solo was still busy moving whatever he was trying to get to in the bedroom, so he pulled out the old photo to get a better look.

 

A smiling General Organa beamed up at him, standing next to a much younger looking General Solo, the two of the holding a young baby. Funny that the General had never mentioned having a child before. He heard Solo stumbling out of the back room, and he hastily shoved the photo back where he had found it.

 

“You ready to go?” Solo asked, and he couldn’t help but notice that he didn’t seem to have grabbed anything.

 

“What about the rest of this stuff?” he asked, gesturing to the stacks of paper everywhere. Maybe they should think about destroying the place before anyone else could piece together information from it. Perhaps Solo would want to take the picture of his family with him, to remind him of what it was he was supposed to be fighting for.

 

“Most of this is just junk,” Solo said before heading out of the RV. Finn took one last look at where the picture was buried among the countless other papers before following him. He had thought Solo would have wanted to take at least something with him considering the place had been home to him for who knew how long, but he seemed eager to get out of there. Maybe the information he had on the First Order was worth enough to leave everything else behind.

 

They took a different route back to the opening in the fence and they slipped through without any incident. They made their way back to where they had parted ways with Rey to find her already waiting for them.

 

“Where were you?” she asked, rushing forward to meet them. “I was getting worried.”

 

“Did you have any trouble with Plutt?” Solo asked as he started leading them back into town.

 

“Not really,” Rey said, looking between the two of them, probably trying to piece together what information they had picked up. “He asked me for an autograph, but he seemed preoccupied with a large shipment he had going out tomorrow.”

 

“Glad to hear it, but we shouldn’t talk any more about this til we get somewhere more private,” Solo informed them.

 

Finn didn’t think it could get much more private than in the middle of nowhere with nothing around them, but he wasn’t going to argue. Solo clearly was more torn up about the loss of the vehicle and everything inside it than he was willing to let on, but if General Organa disliked it, he would have gotten rid of it a long time ago if it didn’t hold any sentimental value.

 

“What did you find you?” Rey asked him in a conspiratorial whisper.

 

“Not much,” he responded back, watching Solo to make sure he was not listening in on their conversation. “It was difficult to make sense of it. Newspaper clippings, transcripts, a picture of his family,” that Solo clearly had not wanted anyone to see, “some numbers on the wall.”

 

“What kind of numbers?” she asked excitedly, and Finn checked to make sure their cover hadn’t been blown, but Solo seemed intent on keeping his distance. “Do you think they were coordinates?”

 

“Maybe. I didn’t get a chance to look at them too closely. But I got a picture.”

 

“Plutt’s shipment for tomorrow is for Jaegar parts. Lots of Jaegar parts, headed to New Zealand.”

 

“So?”

 

“Remember I told you that I thought the First Order was trying to build their own Jaegar?” He nodded, even though the horror of such a possibility was too much to contemplate. “What if Han Solo has coordinates that match the delivery location of Plutt’s Jaegar parts?”

 

Then it was entirely possibly that Plutt was dealing with the First Order and was sending them the parts they needed to build a Jaegar. The First Order couldn’t get their hands on Jaegar technology. The results would be catastrophic. “We have to stop them. We have to get on that plane and find out for sure.” She nodded her agreement, the two of the joined in their conviction that the First Order could not get their hands on a working Jaegar.

 

~*~*~

 

Getting away from General Solo in the middle of the night was easier than he had anticipated. The man was a surprisingly heavy sleeper despite everything he had gone through, and for a moment, Finn lost his nerve, freezing in the doorway as he remembered the long mornings of trying to get Poe out of bed in time for their morning training. If they left now, Poe wouldn’t know what had become of them. Then he remembered the scars the First Order had imposed upon Poe and knew he had no other choice but to keep moving forward. If the trip to New Zealand turned out to be for naught, they would just have to make their way back to the Shatterdome and ask for forgiveness from the General later.

 

Sneaking onto the plane was not as difficult as he had thought it was going to be either. Plutt’s men were so focused on making sure that no one stole any of the equipment that no one was really watching the hatch to the cargo hold. He followed Rey onto the ramp, waiting for any moment for someone to spot them. If they were lucky, they would just kick them out. If they weren’t, well, he didn’t think Plutt’s men had the guns just for show.

 

They made it onto the plane without incident, and hid between a few large crates and the wall of the plane. They kept low while more crates were loaded, straining his ears to know if any of Plutt’s workers were suspicious about the possibility of stowaways. All the while he kept eying up the crates they were hiding behind and hoping that the straps were going to be strong enough.

 

He only relaxed marginally when the plane was sealed and he heard the steady sound of the engine coming to life. Something about being inside a giant piece of machinery made him feel safe, even if he was flying halfway around the world to potentially confront a terrorist organization. Just an ordinary day for any Ranger.

 

“It’s a long flight,” Rey said as she settled down with her back against the crate. “I’ll take first watch so you can get some sleep.”

 

He nodded as he rearranged his position, crossing his legs and closing his eyes as he tilted his head back. If only he could know that sleep would not elude him.


End file.
